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THE 



MYSTERIES OF TOBACCO. 



BY THE 









REV. BENJAMIN I. LANE; 



WITH AN 

INTRODUCTORY LETTER 

ADDRESSED TO THE 

HON. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, LL.D., 

BY THE 

REV. SAMUEL HANSON COX, D.D., 

PASTOR OF THE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, BROOKLYN, NEW YORK. 



t 

NEW YORK : 
WILEY AND PUTNAM, 161 BROADWAY 



*7*%ffC 




1845. 










e^€> — 



^ ty<~^ $fpZ^ /Y; jj%f % 







Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1845, 

BY BENJAMIN I. LANE, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, 

for the Southern District of New York. 






STEREOTYPED BY T. B. SMITH, 
216 WILLIAM STREET, NEW YORK. 









i 



V\ J\\ • •:■• ' * * • 









> 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Inscription and Introduction, 5 

Letter from the Hon. John Quincy Adams, LL.D., . . 31 

Chapter I. — The Nature of Tobacco, .... 41 

II. — The Influence of Tobacco upon the Body, . 53 

III. — The Influence of Tobacco upon the Mind, . 71 

IV. — The Influence of Tobacco on the Morals, . 83 

V. — The Illusory Influence of Tobacco, . . 95 

VI.— The Filthiness of Tobacco, .... 108 

VII. — The Expensiveness of Tobacco, . . * 123 

Supplementary Notes, 140 



INSCRIPTION AND INTRODUCTION. 



TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE 

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, LL.D., 

THE SENIOR EX-PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 
AND THE PATRIARCH OF THE WHOLE NATION. 

Honored and dear Sir : — 

When I consented to comply with the request of 
my excellent friend, the author of this volume, 
to write an Introduction to his treatise, it seemed 
proper to cast it in the epistolary form, and in a 
familiar way, to inscribe it to some honored name, 
that might command the homage of the nation. 
And regarding the highest sense of fitness and pro- 
priety, we were not long in the selection. That 
any well-meant and well-done attempt to benefit 
mankind, would obtain your favor, we well knew ; 
and that many will read this volume for your sake, 
who might otherwise omit the duty, we thought 
more than probable : hence the liberty we take, 



4 INSCRIPTION 

with your own consent, to prefix your name to our 
publication. I call it ours — for no other reason 
than my obvious connection with it and cordial 
approbation of it ; and certainly not to deprive the 
Reverend Mr. Lane of his due honors as the au- 
thor and the producer of a work so learned, elo- 
quent, and worthy, and at the same time so sea- 
sonable and so needed in our menaced community. 
I trust also, Honored Sir, that it will meet your 
own high approbation ; and that before you leave 
us in your venerable age, you will recommend to 
your countrymen a full and honest consideration 
of its contents ; nay, a prompt and principled 
compliance with its luminous and friendly inculca- 
tions. The time is coming when your opinions 
will be quoted with great deference, by the gene- 
rations that are to come after us, in this great and 
incomparable republic. You are already regarded 
by the nation as an honored relic of the olden 
time, the by-gone age of the Revolution ; and 
when you disappear from the light of the living, 
as there will be no other specimen of the sort 
remaining on the stage of time, so, for that reason, 
as well as for other and nobler ones, will a grateful 



AND INTRODUCTION. 5 

and admiring posterity respect all you said, and 
wrote, and did, for the benefit of our common 
country, and, indeed, for the good of universal 
man, with a filial and high esteem — of which we 
may not now attempt to graduate the altitude or 
the influence. 

The time is coming, as I trust in God, when 
genuine piety to him, will demonstrate its nature 
by acts, and principles of philanthropy, and when 
it will be seen that true religion, like true phi- 
losophy, 

Gives Him his praise, and forfeits not her own. 

There is much pseudo-affection for man abroad in 
our age, that ought rather to be branded as lycan- 
thropy than philanthropy ; since its short-sighted- 
ness is so idiotic and unworthy the functions of a 
rational mind. What is genuine seeks the true 
interests of man, even at the hazard of displeasing 
him for a moment. 

Whatever may be the success of this work, and 
we hope in God for much from man, it will be our 



b INSCRIPTION 

solace in any event that we have done right, and 

endeavored to benefit our fellow-creatures. When 

the non-descript prodigy of the Wooden Horse 
stood before the open gates of the wondering 

Trojans, it looked as innocent, and friendly, and 
desirable, on the whole, to them, as tobacco ever 
does to our Americans. They were deceived by 
appearances, and the advice of the silly and fash- 
ionable Thymoetes was followed, against the un- 
palatable warnings of Capys and Laocoon. The 
words of the latter remind us of the faithful appeals 
of our author; though he, I trust, will not so 
vainly tell the truth to his countrymen. Let. us 
recall them — 



Et procul ; O miseri, quae tanta insania, cives ? 
Creditis avectos hostes ? aut ulla putatis 
Dona carere dolis Danaum ? sic notus Ulysses ? 
Aut hoc inclusi ligno occultantur Achivi ; 
Aut haec in nostros fabricata est machina muros, 
Inspectura domos, venturaque desuper urbi ; 
Aut aliquis latet error ; equo ne credite, Teucri. 
Quicquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentes. 

Which we thus accommodate — 

What madness this, with thundering voice he cries, 
O citizens, your welfare to despise ? 



AND INTRODUCTION. 7 

Trust ye the monster is indeed a friend ? 

Or think these dainties may no poison blend 1 

Judge ye this gift is all it would appear ? 

And know ye not the death that slumbers here ? 

Or foes insidious in this fabric lurk, 

Or wanton on their way our doom to work. 

A pest contrived to desolate our homes, 

And change our cities into pompous tombs. 

Or some untold and horrid mischief lies 

Deceptive there our dotage to surprise. 

Trust not the fallacy ! I dread a foe 

Much more with smiles of goodness on his brow. 

Be safe — be clear — be clean ; you'll die full soon 

Without the fate disguised in such a boon. 

To write against tobacco, with its mysteries and 
its luxuries, may be an unpromising business. It 
is easy to refute all our arguments, by saying, It 
is the fashion ; or, Gentlemen do it, and it is 
genteel." This is often their instar omnium in 
the way of argumentation or replication. Still, we 
object to such refutation, whoever is its advocate, 
on grounds of its intrinsical absurdity. First, is 
the fact certainly so ? What oracle has announced 
it ? Second, what is a gentleman ? What the 
criterion of proof? Or, is the subject of the propo- 
sition left so elastic and vague on purpose to 
sophisticate the truth ? A Gentleman ! 



b INSCRIPTION 

There is probably no other very common word 
so indefinitely accommodating, as much in vogue 
with the pretending million, and, on that account, 
worthless in dialectics,, as that of Gentleman. 
Every country, every sphere of the social state, 
every clique of upstarts, or sciolists, or pretenders, 
from kings to beggars, and from saints to scoun- 
drels, and from philosophers to dunces, nay, almost 
every man and woman in the world, has a modi- 
fied and varying idea of what is meant by the 
term, and a criterion of its own sort by which to 
determine the pretension of any candidate or 
claimant. What then is a Gentleman ? Let us 
inquire, if we dare, impartially. 

Its etymology is rather heathenish. It is gens 
in Latin, eOvos in Greek, and in Hebrew a synonyme 
of more opprobrium. Gentilism is from the same 
root, and means — Heathenism. A respectable 
heathen, then, is a gentleman ; and many who 
aspire to the honors of gentility are, too demon- 
strably, and even obviously, practical and intellec- 
tual heathen. If a gentleman^ then, were a 
smoker, or a snuffer, or a chewer, it would not 



AND INTRODUCTION. V 

prove much, in the estimate of a Christian or a 
philosopher, in favor of tobacco. Is it proved — 
fairly proved, by such a monstrosity ? 

When Governeur Morris returned from his foreign 
embassy in Paris, it is said, he was considered the 
most accomplished illustration of the term among 
our countrymen. F actus ad unguem, a person 
of polished and consummate behavior, and of truly 
polite and refined address, he deserved honors for 
patriotism and intelligence not alone, but for man- 
ners also. On occasion of a public dinner given 
him by some select persons of distinction in Phila- 
delphia, it is stated.* that the Reverend Doctor 

, of the Pusey sympathy, was a guest. This 

academical personage felt the power of Mr. Morris, 
and breathed the same atmosphere, not without 
restraint, in his presence. He was eminently ad- 
dicted to the smoking mania — which Morris, with 
elegant consistency, disdained. The Doctor sat 

* This anecdote was communicated to me by my excellent and 
accomplished friend, the scholar and the gentleman, as well as 
the preacher and the Christian, the late Rev. Matthias Bruen, 
A.M., of New York. S. H. C. 



- 



10 INSCRIPTION 

patient and attentive near him ; and through all 
the well-cooked courses and dainties, he was spa- 
ring and abstemious, waiting — for a cigar. All that 
series of various excellence, preceding his favorite 
luxury, he valued only as a tolerably tedious turn- 
pike road to the pleasures of fumation. Presently, 
some fine yellow Spaniards were served — when the 
Doctor, recovering his spirits, reached prompt and 
far to secure one, not unobserved by Mr. Morris. 
The consciously awkward action occasioned a 
mutual glance, when the following dialogue en- 
sued, to the no small interest of the arrested circle. 

Do Gentlemen smoke in France, Mr. Morris ? 

Gentlemen^ Doctor, smoke no where. 

What, Sir ? Oh ! Pardon — hope I don't offend, 
Sir. 

Oh! no. It takes all sorts to make a world. 
Gentleman^ in Paris, means something, Doctor. 
Smoke, then, if you choose ; we have old clothes 
on. I was not, however, aware of your habit. 



AND INTRODUCTION. 11 

The reproof was felt by more than the Doctor. 
The cigars were not patronized. 

And it ought to be immortalized in story, as 
equally well done, well deserved, and well to be 
remembered. The classical, theological, feast- 
haunting, theatre-going, card-playing, Reverend 
Gentleman, of the apostolical succession, via 
Rome, was roasted, if not smoked in turn, very 
unexpectedly, and in a way admonitory to Gen- 
tlemen. It minished, and almost annihilated 
him. His dinner of smoke was spoiled ; nor did 
he soon recover from the shock. He was not wont 
afterward, when fuming and stenching the atmo- 
sphere, so often to exclaim in his devotions, through 
the ascending coils of the fetid vapor — 

For antidote against all care, 
Give me, ye gods, a good cigar. 

It is very plain that wherever smokers, or chewers, 

or snuffers are, and abound, it were well for all 

proximate persons to " have old clothes on ;" since 

such exposure to a vicious and offensive ptyalism, 

must defile their garments, even if it did not nau- 

2 



12 INSCRIPTION 

seate their refinement. Hence in every rail-car, 
or steamer " abaft the wheel" Gentlemen are 
'" not allowed" to smoke ; though it has been well 
observed, that such an inhibition were in terms 
superfluous — since Gentlemen are not the ones 
that need to be reminded or forbidden. We recom- 
mend that their public announcements should 
rather read — Gentlemen never smoke, espe- 
cially in the company of ladies or stran- 
gers ; AND ALL OTHERS ARE WARNED AGAINST 
THE NUISANCE AND ITS PENALTIES. 

It is thought to be a practice of increasing 
patronage of late among us, and in all the lower 
and more vulgar ranks of life especially. Is it be- 
cause the temperance reform has produced such a 
reaction, and men, by way of reprisal for the loss 
of alcohol, are betaking themselves to tobacco ? 
We know not ; but of the fact we are too well cer- 
tified. Even street-smoking, which was once con- 
sidered too ignoble and execrable a practice for any 
well-bred man to perpetrate, is becoming as fash- 
ionable as almost any other folly of the times — not 
even the vast bustles, or ' bishops, of strange and 



AND INTRODUCTION. 13 

monstrous 'succession' — retrocession — on the other 
sex, excepted ! 

And what are the causes of this ? Men do not 
love tobacco by nature. The dirty weed is poison- 
ous and offensive. It revolts the taste of all ani- 
mals, and produces the most spontaneous opposi- 
tion and disgust in its contact with the stomach. 
It is endured and liked only in a way of coereing 
and perverting nature. But — there are causes ; 
and either singly, or partially, or in aggregate, they 
are mostly identified with the following : 

1. duackery — pretending the medicinal virtues 
of tobacco, especially as a specific in certain cases. 

2. Idleness, with nothing to do, but smoke and 
be stupefied. 

3. A precocious and absurd aping of manhood 
in boys, who wish to advertise or anticipate their 
prospective virility, by enacting the fooleries of men. 

4. The insidious power of a tobacco education, 



14 INSCRIPTION. 

among parents, companions, and neighborhoods, 
that luxuriate in the practice, at births, marriages, 
funerals, and all other occasions. 

5. Mental vacancy, and the itch for change. 

6. The love of excitement. 

7. The sleepy oblivion or grateful stupefaction it 
induces. 

8. Recklessness, never thinking properly on the 
subject ; or, acting without reflection or any ma- 
ture plan, and so gliding imperceptibly into the 
habit and the slavery of the practice — ignorant of 
their own damage. 

9. False notions of what is genteel, and a wil- 
lingness to be genteel on terms remarkably cheap 
and low. 

10. Exposures to the weather ; when they 
smoke, or chew, or snuff; as others drink intem- 
perately, because it is so cold — or so warm — or so 



AND INTRODUCTION. 15 

wet— or so dry — or else so indescribably threaten- 
ing, or peculiar, or of no particular character, and 
therefore they must take — alcohol, or — tobacco ! 

11. Troubles of life — possibly of conscience. 

12. The sway of fashion ; who would not be in 
the fashion ? 

13. The power of habit ; fumo, fumavi, fumabo, 
is with them the whole story in three words. 

14. I can quit it when I will ; a deceptive idea 
or fancy that they can so easily, and at any time 
—which never comes, voluntarily — their will is so 
free, reform : the reason why millions never repent 
of any of their sins, and are never forgiven, they 
can — so easily ! 

And if there be any other cause, as possibly 
there may, I only aver, that, with a few possible 
exceptions, it is never a good one ! It is anything 
but morally worthy, prudential, wise, and virtuous. 



2* 



16 INSCRIPTION 

Now, to the question in which way of the three 

f SMOKING ] 

Modern <j chewing } vulgar modes of self-defile- 

i 

[ SNUFFING J 

ment, are we most disagreeable to real gentlemen, 
true ladies, and genuine philosophers % I answer, 
it may be difficult and useless to determine. 
Enough that it is all wrong — that every man is 
better without it — that its practice is hurtful and 
injurious, without any real benefit or mark of wis- 
dom in it. 

I refer to the volume of Mr. Lane for the proof 
of these positions, and of others, in this introduc- 
tory. But I may go farther ; and be at least more 
distinct and emphatic, when giving an inventory 
or synopsis of the reasons of my own principled 
and growing aversion — since my vestibule may not 
be too long for his temple of mysteries. 

1. It is unnatural, that is, positively contrary to 
nature, and properly at war with it. 



AND INTRODUCTION. 17 

2. It is abusive — certainly the weed, like opium 
in similar relations, was never given for such ends 
and purposes of consumption ; nor are our senses, 
and our whole sympathetic bodies, to be so dis- 
honored and abused with innocence or impunity. 

3. It is unclean — that is, it is filthy — that is, 
dirty — that is, very opposite to all elegance, purity, 
and taste. 

4. It is unwholesome — wasting and wearing the 
organs and sympathies of our animal economy, and 
precipitating the process of our too speedy dissolu- 
tion. 

5. It is offensive — to refinement, to decency, to 
good breeding, to nature, to sense, and to propriety. 

6. Its appearances and aspects are unattractive, 
unpromising, and unhappy to all beholders. 

7. It is not gentlemanly. 

8. It is a wanton waste, in respect to its cost ! 



18 INSCRIPTION 

How much in a year, often increasingly, is the 
amount of money paid by some persons for this 
luxury ! It is almost incredible — as often its sum 
is purposely unknown. If all Christians paid as 
much for evangelical missions, it would soon revo- 
lution the world. 

9. It tends to intemperance in drinking. 

10. Its associations are low and bad, and even 
immoral. 

11. It is shameful and intolerable in a professed 
minister of Christ. 

12. It is not properly congruous with the sancti- 
ty and the implications of a Christian profession — 
as favoring not spirituality, but its opposites, all of 
them, as sensualism and all that atmosphere of 
srrwky obtuseness, to the moral perceptions and 
instincts of a living and devoted Christian, which 
is often seen to halo and surround it. 

To the minister of Christ — what shall I say ? 



AND INTRODUCTION. 19 

Your voice is injured, if you snuff. If you chew, 
only think of the incongruity ! If you smoke, your 
error is not to be concealed. If you are addicted 
to it in any way, you are degraded, and your odor 
follows you everywhere. Its offences are many, and 
they adhere to your persons. Pernoctant nobiscum, 
peregrinantur, rusticantur — dico aperte, nos, nos, 
consules desumus.* 

Large is the charter of our good Creator — using 
the world as not abusing it. Like Adam 
in Eden we have the grant of all, with only one 
exception in the world — God forbids all abuse ! 
It is sin ; it is perversion ; it is confusion ; it is 
damage ; and it is transgression. Now, any thing 
is abused or endamaged — 

1. When not appreciated in its true nature ; 

2. When not appropriated to its proper end ; 

3. When taken and applied recklessly, and with- 
out asking or thinking about the question of its 

* Cicero. 



20 INSCRIPTION 

legitimate and proper use, according to the excel- 
lent will of God. 

Do thyself no harm is a divine mandate, as ap- 
plicable to each of us, as to the jailer at Philippi, 
when about to " play the Roman fool" by falling on 
his own sword. We sin against ourselves, when 
we sin against God ; but here more directly. To 
drink alcohol as a beverage, is abuse, is self-harm, 
and often self-murder. On the same principle 
we condemn tobacco and its mysteries, 
when taken as a luxury. God never gave the 
weed for such an end ! We abuse his gift, we 
abuse ourselves, we hurt his creatures, we set a bad 
example, we contravene his own benign and all- 
wise constitution, in the hateful practice. We op- 
press nature and pervert its products. How many 
millions of years of human life in the aggregate 
has it lost ! 

Woes love a cluster, says Dr. Young. So do vices. 
Every sin is social. It knows how to " increase, and 
multiply, and replenish the earth," with a ven- 
geance ! There is no other fecundity known to us, 



AND INTRODUCTION. 21 

equaling the self-productiveness of sin. One aberra- 
tion from propriety, or one false principle or error, may 
in its train corrupt a world, explode a universe, and 
astound eternity. All the methods of luxuriating 
in tobacco tend to social wantonness, with aspects 
and associations not of good report. Many a 
clergyman has disgusted a congregation, lost a 
good settlement, and injured the best of causes, by 
his ignominious indulgences of this sort. Many 
truly elevated and refined persons object to hearing 
in the pulpit a notorious man of tobacco — their 
feelings are so revolted at the thought, and some- 
times at the sight, of the nuisance. On the other 
hand, who does not respect a person who on prin- 
ciple abstains — who can decline an obtrusive and 
ill-bred challenge to participate — who, with good 
manners and urbanity, can show on all occasions 
the requisite courage to keep his own propriety, 
and without ambiguity or hesitation, say, No, sir ! 
I am no tobacco or snuff taker. And who is not 
advantaged, in his person, his appearance, his dig- 
nity, his health, his morals, and his respectability. 
by a consistent, and principled, and self-respecting 
abstinence ? When a lordling of great titles once 



22 INSCRIPTION 

asked, in London, a distinguished friend of the 
Temperance Reformation, What good does it ? the 
reply was, The good it does, my Lord, is chron- 
icled, ascertained, reported, and accredited by all 
who are acquainted with the facts. Will your 
Lordship be good enough to tell me what evil it 
does ? whom it injures, or makes worse, or reason- 
ably at all offends ? What harm is it ? 

And can any one justly fear that total absti* 
nence from this execrable narcotic, can in any way 
harm him ? Or, can he say as much when he 
does not abstain? As for excuses, poor is the 
genius of a man who cannot command one, and 
every one plausibly his own. Still, we hear them 
all with diffidence. We know they feel the need 
of vindicating what they love to do, and what they 
are not yet ready to forego. We pity the man 
who puts himself in the predicament to make ex- 
cuses for such practices. What cannot an ingeni- 
ous sinner speciously excuse ? The deceitfulness 
of sin is at once deeply insidious and shrewdly in- 
ventive, and many a tall and ponderous intellect 
has become its easy and unconscious victim. 



AND INTRODUCTION. 23 

What is the fact to the eye of calm and consider- 
ate observation ? Look at the ways of revelry and 
voluptuous infatuation in our thronged cities. 
Look at our theatre-goers, our ball-frequenters, our 
gambling-house loafers ; and mark all the tributa- 
ry rills of influence that come to a fearful conflu- 
ence in the great ocean of profligacy and perdition 
— and say, if the dirty vice of tobacco-mongering, 
in all its forms, degrees, and stages, of dishonor, is 
not congenial, powerful, and even essential, in 
the formidable result, as well as the stealthy 
process. The genius of tobacco is properly bac- 
chanalian, sensual, and deleterious to all the dig- 
nity of man, in low life of savages and boors not 
only. 

In courts and palaces he also reigns, 
And in luxurious cities, where the noise 
Of riot ascends above their loftiest towers, 
And injury and outrage ; and when night 
Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons 

Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine. 

******** 

Tobacco's curling fumes, or covert quid, 

Or pungent dust, assists them in their course, 

3 



24 INSCRIPTION 

Congenial with ebriety and noise, 

The prompter of profaneness, folly, crime.* 

Our last appeal is to the ladies — to real ladies. 
Tell me, ye educated and elegant fair ones, whose 
sense is too genuine for affectation, and too much 
your own for servility to the oracles of folly and 
fashion, tell me, if the lords of your preference are 
the steeped and pickled fumigators, salivators, ru- 
minators, sternutators or olfactors, that patronize 
the weed, and carry with them its atmosphere and 
its elements and its insignia into your drawing- 
rooms, your coaches, and your presence, on all 
practicable occasions ? I should like to plead the 
cause before a jury of a thousand ladies — but they 
should be all initiated madams, married ladies, will- 
ing to try the cause, and true deliverance make, 
according to evidence. In such circumstances, 
their verdict would be sure and final. Their 
award would be, " Guilty, especially if there was 
any hope of hanging, or drowning, or burning, the 
dirty prisoner — Tobacco." 

Men are weak enough physically, they are suf- 

* The last four lines are not from Milton. 



AND INTRODUCTION. 25 

ficiently vulnerable and sufficiently mortal, they are 
transient and fleeting and vanishing like vapor in 
their life ; and why not abstain from all the 
causes which debilitate the body, enervate the fac- 
ulties, and accelerate the catastrophe of death ? 
This abstinence is the dictate equally of philoso- 
phy and duty. But — I have said enough ; too 
much, possibly, for one who only intends to call the 
reader to a banquet of truth prepared by our au- 
thor, with the conviction, that duly relished and 
digested, it will aid mightily the health of the com- 
munity. Oh ! that it might exorcise the dirty de- 
mon from the body of our nation ! It is needed 
everywhere, in colleges and halls, in Congress, and 
all our places of State legislation, in schools and 
shops, in houses of domestic interests, in forums 
and in pulpits, and wherever there are men who 
are willing to do right, who desire to be wise and 
happy, long-lived and honored at last in their exit 
from this crazy and wonderful world. 

We must here add a word of solemn protest and 
reprehension — respecting churches. Men are 
not wont there indeed to smoke — but how lamen- 



26 INSCRIPTION 

tably often do they chew, snuff, and spit*, to 
the grand annoyance of all the cleanly, and all the 
devout, who have to witness the shameful profana- 
tion ! These abominations, we are credibly assu- 
red, are observed — not frequently, yet sometimes — 
even at the communion table ! ! Here indeed it 
becomes horrible, and worthy of the disciplinary 
animadversion of ecclesiastical authority ! I must 
abhor it and pronounce it plainly impious. An in- 
dulgence so filthy, so indolent, so reckless and irrev- 
erent, in the very house and the holy presence of 
God ! may it never be repeated, if it ever was 
perpetrated ! Let a man think— have a little fore- 
cast — look ahead — and remember how sinful it is 
towards Him, who says, Ye shall keep my Sab- 
baths AND REVERENCE MY SANCTUARY ; I AM 

Jehovah. Let all things be done de- 
cently, and in order. 

In some churches the Trustees have taken the 
nuisance in hand, and with the sword of Caesar, 

* Some chewers seem to need a spittoon in their pew not only, 
but two or three of them, large ones, with a pew to themselves 
twenty feet from any decent person. 



AND INTRODUCTION. 27 

have formally vetoed the practice in their domain, 
and even made a public monument of their decree 
in the vestibule of the sanctuary, in these or sim- 
ilar words : The Trustees positively for- 
bid THE USE OF TOBACCO, WITH ITS FILTHY 
RESULTS, IN THIS SANCTUARY OF GoD, AND ES- 
PECIALLY DURING DIVINE SERVICE, UNDER 

penalty of the law. And many a worthy 
officer of a congregation, whose usefulness is more 
felt than seen, we mean the unappreciated sexton, 
has reason to sound a trump of accusation against 
a set of Gentlemen, well known to him, whose 
filthy salivations so mark and desecrate the sacred 
places of the sanctuary, as to offend him especially, 
whose labors are execrably enhanced as the result ! 
And should he publish the names of these Gen- 
tlemen sat sapienti, non stulto ! sed — com- 

jiressis venis, pitnitae impetum cohibe. 

We extract the following from a late daily news- 
paper, showing that we are not alone in our de- 
nunciations. 



Some of our cotemporaries are u out in no mea- 

3* 



28 INSCRIPTION 

sured terms against street-smoking in New York. 
We learn that the Native American candidates for 
the next councils are to be pledged to abate, among 
many others, this crying nuisance." * * 

" We need another most powerful Temperance 
reformation against that filthy weed, tobacco. Its 
effect taken at the nose or the mouth is always in- 
toxicating, and it is also the mother of intem- 
perate drinking. Ladies ! Clergymen ! ! Moral- 
ists ! ! ! get up an influence against it ! See what 
a robber it is ! 

"In the year 1843 the people of Great Britain 
and Ireland expended more than $> 40,000,000 for 
tobacco alone. A contemporary says : If the weed 
had been worked into pigtail, rather more than an 
inch thick, it would have formed a line nearly 
100,000 miles long, enough to go nearly five times 
round the world. Whew ! 

" Messrs. Schaer & Kustur, merchants of Balti- 
more, shipped a few days ago, by the ship Henry 
Shelton which sailed for St. Petersburg, seven hun- 



AND INTRODUCTION. 29 

dred hhds. of tobacco, valued at $100,000. This 
is the first entire cargo of tobacco ever shipped from 
the United States to Russia." 

And now, honored sir, in what remains of this doc- 
ument, if I am more personal I shall not be less 
deferential; assured also that your characteristic 
magnanimity will liberally and well appreciate 
what I freely write — and even if there should be 
a lugged-in classical recreation, one or two, our 
readers I hope, but especially yourself, will regard 
it with no disfavor : duse de causa, pro mea con- 
suetudine, beviter et simpliciter dixi, judices, ea 
confido probata esse omnibus ; quae non fori, neque 
judiciali [seu clerica] con suet adine, et de hominis 
ingenio [perverso] et communiter de ipsius studio 
[trupissimo] locutus sum, ea, judices, a vobis spero 
esse in bonam partem accepta; ab eo. qui judicium 
exercet, certe scio. 

But, sir, with your letter granting consent to this 
present use of your name, we have all been so 
gratified, that I shall make no scruple of not with- 
holding it from the public. It shall be transcribed 



30 INSCRIPTION 

and inserted in this Introduction — and I wish I 
could show to all men the original ! The chi- 
rography of the writer, now, I think, in his 79th 
year, is a commentary and a eulogium on those 
habits of temperance in all things^ of which he 
is such a rare and impressive example. The en- 
velope, for the sake of the autograph, has been 
begged away from me by a friend, to whom I re- 
luctantly resigned it — mainly on account of the 
seal, with its beautiful device and motto, of which 
I must tell the reader and so preserve the memory. 
An acorn, decorated with two oak leaves ; neither 
guardant, nor rampant, nor couchant ; but simply 
extant and verdant ; surmounted with the circular 
motto, alteri seculo. This I view as very 
happy ; as showing a republican independence of 
all the beggarly barbarism of heraldic symbols and 
inscriptions, so often badly usurped, and imitated, 
and perpetuated in our own free country, whose 
affinities and honors are neither feudal nor monar- 
chical, but properly of another and a higher char- 
acter. It also shows modesty, forecast, the esti- 
mate of posterity anticipated, and an original wis- 
dom of sentiment worthy alike of the philosopher, 



AND INTRODUCTION. 31 

the republican, and the man — meaning, for a fu- 
ture AGE, or another age ; the acorn fairly- 
prospective of the noble oak it makes in other days ; 
though humble now, and unobtrusive, and unseen, 
yet to become the tall monarch of the wood, be- 
neath whose giant branches and frequent foliage, 
protection and refreshment may be yielded grateful 
to many a weary traveller in other days and years. 
How worthy were such sentiment of our statesmen, 
our patriots, and our countrymen! especially if, 
with revelation's light, far-sighted, and by faith, 
their estimates were amplified and crowned with 
the hope of heaven, and their alteri seculo 
justly construed to mean, hereafter, in eter- 
nity, is my reward. 



the letter. 

Quincy, Massachusetts, 19 Aug. 1845. 

Dear Sir, — 

I have received your letter of the 13th instant, 
and shall deem myself honored by the inscription 



32 INSCRIPTION 

to me of your introduction to the proposed publica- 
tion of the Reverend B. J. Lane's work on To- 
bacco and its Mysteries. In my early 
youth I was addicted to the use of tobacco in two 
of its mysteries, smoking and chewing. I was 
warned by a medical friend of the pernicious 
operation of this habit upon the stomach and the 
nerves ; and the advice of the physician was for- 
tified by the results of my own experience. More 
than thirty years have passed away since I delib- 
erately renounced the use of tobacco in all its 
forms ; and although the resolution was not car- 
ried into execution without a struggle of vitiated 
nature, I never yielded to its impulses ; and in the 
space of three or four months of self-denial, they 
lost their stimulating power, and I have never since 
felt it as a privation. 

I have often wished that every individual of the 
human race afflicted with this artificial passion, 
could prevail upon himself to try but for three 
months the experiment which I have made ! sure 
that it would turn every acre of tobacco-land into a 



AND INTRODUCTION. 33 

wheat-field, and add five years of longevity to the 
average of human life. 

I am, with great respect, Dear Sir, 

Your friend and Christian brother, 

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

Reverend Samuel H. Cox, D.D. Brooklyn, N. Y. 

For this letter, Mr. Adams, I thank you with 
all my heart, not only as an individual, but on be- 
half of the country, posterity, and the human race. 
In such feats as these, the statesman, and the pa- 
triot, and the philanthropist, are identified, making 
an unostentatious, but most useful exegi monu- 
mentum jire perennius, which shades and 
dishonors the proud pretensions of the warrior, the 
demagogue, and the hero, of battles, victories, and 
envied applause. I consider it the fitting index, 
epitome, and eulogium too, of Mr. Lane's popular 
and useful work, now forthcoming, " harnessed in 
order serviceable," and intending a grand reform in 
the usages of our American society. I view it as a 
gem for the nation, that will not fail to be exten- 
sively appreciated, widely beneficent, and frequent- 
ly quoted, especially by the wise, alteri seculo, 



34 INSCRIPTION 

as an oracle, plurimum in parvo, against this in- 
sidious and hypocritical ravager, this dirty depre- 
dator; on the interests and the hopes of improved 
society in our noble Republic. And as to health, 
you have touched the very point ! the stomach and 
the nerves are its proximate victims. The stom- 
ach, that wondrous laboratory of all the pabulum 
of life, that central, and primary, and all-controlling 
organ of our wonderfully coin pounded being in this 
w T orld, first "gives signs of wo;" and then the 
nerves, the glands with their secretiors, the mus- 
cles and functions of the entire system, respond 
to the shock, and reel under its deleterious power ; 
according to that grand apothegm of the medical 
schools, so worthy and so true, ventriculo languido 
omnia languent ; when the stomach is disordered, 
the total system droops in sympathetic weakness. 
Yes ! the mind included — and I believe that, when 
tobacco makes the morbid languor, the moral powers 
are debilitated, their sense blunted, the very con- 
science injured and corrosive, as the consequence. 

I rejoice, Mr. Adams, that you are now set in 
alto relievo before the world, as a witness, and 



AND INTRODUCTION. 35 

an example, and a protester, against this treacherous 
damager ; while the mild and hortatory manner of 
the national patriarch, is too paternal and too po- 
tential to receive anything less than universal ap- 
probation, from the intelligent and the good of our 
countrymen. It will, however, be quoted on the 
other side of the Atlantic, and the exemplary pro- 
testation of the old man eloquent, the ex-President 
of the United States, will be remembered and felt, 
in the argumentation of millions, who never heard 
of King James' Counterblast against To- 
bacco, and who, had they read it through, would 
still prefer the wisdom of the republican sage to 
that of the pedantic and prerogative-affecting 
monarch. 

But, I must ask pardon of the reader for the 
longitude, if not the latitude, of these strictures, 
and bidding farewell to yourself, Mr. Adams, with 
my reiterated thanks for your letter, I devoutly 
pray that this publication may be made a blessing 
to our beloved country, to the civilized and the 
savage world ; and that you, honored and dear 
sir, may experience the large and genuine influ" 



36 INSCRIPTION 

ences of the grace of God ; and, through the ac- 
complished and eternal mediation of One, the Son 
of God and the Son of man, whom all saints ap- 
prehend and trust as their ineffably glorious Re- 
deemer and inheritance, that you may be well 
prepared for that great change sublime, which 
death will soon realize to the best, and prove at 
last and for ever the vision, the fruition, and the 
perfection, of the divine glory, with all the saved, in 
the presence of God Almighty and the Lamb ! 

I commend you and myself, with all we love 
and value, to his incomparable favor, looking for 
the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal 
life ; and am, honored and dear sir, with distin- 
guished consideration, 

Your friend and servant for Jesus 1 sake, 

SAMUEL H. COX. 

Brooklyn, N. Y. Aug. 25, 1845. 






THE MYSTERIES OF TOBACCO. 



There is a hazard in placing one's self in oppo- 
sition to the current of prevailing and long-establish- 
ed habits. The cry of ultraism, or the frown of in- 
dignation from the circles of pleasure and fashion, 
or the curled lip of those who love to puff and be 
puffed, has made many a daring spirit quail, and re- 
main, at least silent, when they could not approve. 
In the present instance our only hope of getting good 
is in that of doing it, and this hope shall nerve us 
to raise the note of warning and spare not. 

Were we to appear as the apologist of Tobacco, 
smiles and blessings would attend us. Garlands 

of praise from those dreamy beings who sit amid 



38 



THE MYSTERIES 



clouds would be showered on our path. Then how 
grateful, and how pleasing, 

" To sing the praises of that glorious weed — 
Dear to mankind, whate'er his race, his creed, 
Condition, color, dwelling, or degree ! 
From Zembla's snows to parched Arabia's sands, 
Loved by all lips, and common to all hands ! 
Hail, sole cosmopolite, tobacco, hail ! 
Shag, long-cut, short-cut, pig-tail, quid or roll, 
Dark negro-head, or Orinooka pale, 
In every form congenial to the soul." 

Such service would harmonize with the spirit of 
the times. But smiles and blessings we cannot 
purchase at such a price. We must not bear false 
witness to save or condemn either friend or foe. 
We have too deeply felt the lash of the tyrant to 
become his eulogist ; and we purpose to show you 
some of the wounds and scars which he is ever 
inflicting with his whip of scorpions. 

The habitual use of tobacco is one of the most 

prevalent evils of the present day ; it is one of the 

* most formidable. Few have been the efforts at 



OF TOBACCO. 39 

reformation, and little success has attended them. 
The sober light of reason and the scorching fire of 
invective, have been spent upon this evil practice in 
vain. In vain has chemistry developed the poison- 
ous quality of the article ; in vain has experience 
taught us that misery, disease, and death follow in 
its train. The deceptive pleasure of its use, like 
the charm of a serpent, has held us captive, and 
none have been fully aware of its nature, until its 
poisonous fangs have been felt. 

The inroads that tobacco makes upon the body 
and mind often lie concealed. It is a disguised foe. 
It assumes the airs and tones of a friend, anxious 
to relieve us, even when it is administering a deadly 
poison. It is well understood that sickness and 
death are the portion of poor, fallen, human nature ; 
but do men ever think of looking to the tobacco 
shop as one of the sources of these ills, when their 
circle is prematurely invaded ? Inquiry is indeed 
often made as to the cause of such and such a dis- 
ease, but none ever think of pointing to that social, 
smiling friend, tobacco. Indeed, he that in secret 
has hurled the dart is kindly asked to step in and 

A* 



40 THE MYSTERIES 

heal or alleviate the distress. Arsenic appears with 
a lowering brow, and the compressed lip of mad- 
ness, and the naked dirk ; — it does its work quick, 
and is known to be an enemy. Not so with to- 
bacco : it has a smiling face, its tread is light, some 
of its movements pleasing, and though it inflicts 
more pain and misery than arsenic, it does its work 
slowly and disguisedly ; and hence the food we eat, 
the water we drink, and the air we breathe, are too 
often charged with the evils which itself inflicts. 

It will be a thankless task ; it may be a hapless 
one, to convince men that the habitual use of to- 
bacco is indeed a sore evil tinder the sun. But 
we will set ourselves to the work, relying upon your 
candor to look an enemy in the face ; and we 
promise to 

" Speak of it as it is : nothing extenuate, 
Nor set down aught in malice." 

It will be bad enough to say the truth of it. 
Othello like, it stabs its lovers, and stabs them 
while reposing in security. 



OF TOBACCO. 41 



CHAPTER I. 

THE NATURE OF TOBACCO. 

In prosecuting this subject, we will attend first to 
the inquiry, What is Tobacco? It is, says the 
Encyclopedia Americana, " a nauseous and poison- 
ous weed, of an acrid taste and disagreeable odor ; 
in short, whose only properties are deleterious." Dr. 
Bigelow, in his American Medical Botany, says, 
" In its external and sensible properties there is no 
plant which has less to recommend it than the 
common tobacco ; a small quantity taken into the 
stomach excites violent vomiting, attended with 
other alarming symptoms." 

In an elaborate chemical analysis of Tobacco, 
published by M. Yauquelin in the Annales de 
Chimie, we have the following results. " The broad- 
leaved tobacco furnishes from its juices the following 
constituents. 1. A large quantity of animal mat- 



42 THE NATURE 

ter, of an albuminous nature. 2. Malate of lime 
with an excess of acid. 3. Acetic acid. 4. Nitrate 
and muriate of potash in observable quantities. 

5. A red matter soluble in alcohol and water, which 
swells and boils in the fire, its nature undetermined. 

6. Muriate of ammonia. 7. A peculiar acrid, vola- 
tile, colorless substance, soluble in water and alco- 
hol, and which appears different from any thing 
known in the vegetable kingdom. It is this prin- 
ciple which gives to prepared tobacco its peculiar 
character, and it is perhaps not to be found in any 
other species of plant. Its medicinal activity is 
supposed to reside in this volatile portion, which is 
the essential oil." A more recent analysis w^e take 
from Boussingault. " The virtues of tobacco very 
probably reside in the volatile vegetable alkali, 
nicotine, which it contains. The analysis of M. 
Posselt and Kiemann show the leaf of tobacco to 
be composed as follows : Nicotine 0*07 ; extractive 
matter 2-87 ; gum 1*74 ; a green resin 0-27 ; albu- 
men 0-26 ; gluten 1*05 ; malic acid 0*51 ; malate 
of ammonia 0*12 ; sulphate of potash 0*05 ; chlo- 
ride of potassium 0*06 ; nitrate and malate of pot- 
ash 0*21 ; phosphate of lime 017 ; malate of lime 



OP TOBACCO. 43 

0*72 ; silica 0*09 ; woody matter 4*97 ; and water 
86-84-= 100-00. During the fermentation of the 
leaves there is always a formation of ammoniacal 
salts. 

The following are some of the experiments made 
by Fontana. 1. " I made," says he, " a small inci- 
sion in a pigeon's leg, and applied to it the oil of 
tobacco. In two minutes it lost the use of its foot. 
2. I repeated this experiment on another pigeon, 
and the event was exactly the same. 3. I made a 
small wound in the pectoral muscles of a pigeon 
and applied the oil to it; in three minutes the 
animal could no longer support itself on the left 
foot. 4. This experiment, repeated on another 
pigeon, resulted in the same way. 5. I introduced 
into the pectoral muscles of a pigeon a small bit of 
wool covered with this oil ; the pigeon in a few 
seconds fell insensible. 6. Two other pigeons to 
whose muscles I applied this oil, vomited several 
times. 7. Two others with empty stomachs, 
treated in the same mode, made every effort to 
vomit." 



44 THE NATURE 

Koempfer ranks it with the strong vegetable 
poisons. A thread dipped in the oil of tobacco, and 
drawn through a wound made by a needle in an 
animal, killed it in the space of seven minutes. 
Mr. Brodie found that two drops of the oil applied 
to the tongue of a cat, with an interval of fifteen 
minutes occasioned death. A single drop sus- 
pended in an ounce of water, and injected into the 
rectum of a cat, produced death in about five min- 
utes. One drop suspended in an ounce and a half 
of mucilage, and thrown into the rectum of a 
dog, produced violent symptoms, and a repetition 
of the experiment killed him. How then can any 
man habitually use so noxious a plant without 
realizing the most serious consequences to his 
health, and constitution ? 

Let us now glance at its medicinal qualities. 
It is a most powerful narcotic, emetic : cathartic, 
and diuretic. Its effects as a medicine upon the 
system, are severe nausea, vomiting, cold sweats, 
universal tremors, and extreme debility. "Even 
the physician," says Dr. Alcott, " some of whose 
medicines are so active that a few grains will 



OF TOBACCO. 



45 



destroy life, at once finds tobacco too powerful for 
his use ; and in those cases where it is most clearly 
required only makes it a last resort." As an emetic, 
it is said to exceed all others in its promptness, 
violence, and permanence of impression. In some 
instances it has been used w T ith success in expelling 
other poisons from the stomach on account of the 
promptness and violence with which it acts. It 
can be applied as well externally in the form of 
a poultice to the stomach as internally, and 
with the same effect. A surgeon in the U. S. 
army says that the soldiers had an expedient to 
exempt themselves from duty by wearing a piece 
of tobacco under each armpit until the most alarm- 
ing symptoms of illness appeared in the Avhole 
system. Dr. Fowler has used it with success in a 
few cases of dropsy and dysury. But it should be 
remembered that not one of his cures w r as effected 
by the pipe, the quid, or the snvff-box. The 
forms in which he uniformly ordered it were either 
infusion, tincture, or pills. Says Dr. Bigelow, 
" Notwithstanding the common use, and extensive 
consumption of tobacco in its various forms, it must 
unquestionably be ranked among narcotic poisons 



46 THE NATURE 

of the most active class. The great prostration, 
excessive giddiness, fainting, and violent affections 
of the alimentary canal, which often attend its 
internal use, make it proper that so potent a drug 
should be resorted to by medical men, only in 
restricted doses, and on occasions of magnitude." 
The remedy often proves more fatal than the dis- 
ease, " A medical practitioner," says Paris, " after 
repeated trials to reduce a strangulated hernia, 
injected an infusion of tobacco, and shortly after 
sent the patient in a carriage to the Westminster 
Hospital for the purpose of undergoing the operation ; 
but the unfortunate man arrived only a few minutes 
before he expired." 

"I knew a woman," says the same learned au- 
thor, " who applied to the heads of three of her 
children afflicted with the scald-head, an ointment 
composed of snuff and butter ; but what was her 
surprise to find them immediately seized with ver- 
tigo, violent vomiting, fainting, and convulsions." 
We once witnessed a case of the same kind with 
the same results. 



OF TOBACCO. 47 

Tobacco is, in fact, a violent, absolute poison. A 
very moderate quantity-introduced into the system, 
— even applying the moistened leaves over the stom- 
ach, — has been known very suddenly to extinguish 
life. 

The fact that it is a powerful article of the 
Materia Medica, and so powerful that the best phy- 
sicians use it only in extreme cases as a dernier 
resort^ and that then, in many instances, it proves 
fatal, abundantly evidences that it never ought to 
be used, as a luxury^ by men in health. No man 
in his sober senses would think that because calo- 
mel has been successfully used as a medicine, 
therefore a person might be benefited by taking it 
daily, when in health. Indeed, ninety-nine hun- 
dredths of those who constantly use tobacco, would 
not risk the consequences of a daily use of opium, 
and yet the habitual use of tobacco is instrumental 
in shortening many more lives, and when fairly 
introduced into the system, proves equally as viru- 
lent a poison. The oil of tobacco approaches 
nearer than any other to that most deadly of all 
poisons, the prussic acid. The only reason that 



48 THE NATURE 

every quid and cigar does not produce complete 
prostration or death is, that nature puts forth her 
best efforts to resist its influence, and, as if mad at 
the offence given her, either spits it out, or other- 
wise ejects it from the system. Bat the constant 
application of it from year to year, will, in the 
course of time, so wear out her energies, that she 
will sink under the reiterated assaults. 

Most persons who have been in the habit of using 
tobacco can recollect that sometimes, in taking the 
pipe or quid, they have suddenly felt its influence go 
over the whole system, like an electric shock, — in 
a moment they have felt it to the very end of their 
fingers, as if the nerves, like the strings of a harp, 
were vibrating upon the surface. The sensation 
would not be altogether unpleasant, were it not for 
the apprehension which instantly arises, that na- 
ture has received a terrible stroke, and that some 
fearful result will be the consequence. This is 
another evidence of the power of tobacco instantly 
to affect the whole system, and that such assaults 
cannot continue to be made without serious injury. 



OF TOBACCO. 49 

Burton, a very popular and learned writer, says, 
in his work entitled " The Anatomy of Melancholy," 
and of melancholy it is certainly a most prolific 
source, " Tobacco," you perceive he speaks satiri- 
cally, " divine, rare, super-excellent tobacco, which 
goes far beyond all their panaceas, potable gold, 
and philosophers' stones, a sovereign remedy to all 
diseases. A good vomit, I confess, a virtuous herb, 
if it be well qualified, opportunely taken, and me- 
dicinally used ; but as it is commonly abused by 
most men, w T hich take it as tinkers do ale, 'tis a 
plague, a mischief, a violent purger of goods, lands, 
health : hellish, devilish, and damned tobacco, the 
ruin and overthrow of body and soul." 

" Tobacco." says the compiler of a Cyclopedia, 
{i contains an oil of a poisonous quality, which is 
used in some countries to destroy snakes, by putting 
a little on the tongue ; on receiving it the snake is 
seized with convulsions, coils itself up and dies, 
and what is very singular, becomes almost as stiff 
and hard as if it were dried in the sun." Many in- 
sects die instantly by having tobacco smoke blowed 
upon them. 



50 THE NATURE 

Beck, in his Materia Medica, says, " The essen- 
tial oil, obtained from tobacco by distillation, is 
very highly narcotic, so that when introduced into 
a wound, or injected into the rectum, it occasions 
instant death." He further remarks as a singu- 
larity in relation to the operation of narcotics, that 
" the infusion of tobacco not only affects the ner- 
vous system, but acts powerfully on the heart, 
causing its contractions to cease, while the essential 
oil has no such effect." The testimony of the cel- 
ebrated Cullen, in his Materia Medica, and of Dar- 
win in his Zoonomia, corresponds with that of 
every other medical writer of eminence, in relation 
to the poisonous quality, and the deleterious and 
often fatal influence of the common use of tobacco. 

Now supposing a chemical analysis should show 
that strawberries possess as deleterious properties, 
and medicinal qualities as powerful, and that phy- 
sicians with united voice proclaimed them a poison 
always injurious, and often fatal, who could be 
persuaded to put them on his table as an article 
of luxury ? What parent would suffer his child to 
eat them ? Laws would be enacted at once, pro- 



OF TOBACCO. 



51 



hibiting the sale of them under severe penalties. 
Why then is tobacco so generally used, and why 
are so few efforts made to save the world from its 
deadly influence ? Why ? Because of its intoxi- 
cating property, — the appetite and habit is so strong 
that the grave must open to make a man throw 
away his pipe or his quid. Men are held captive 
by it, in the same way that they are held captive 
by alcohol. It does not, so generally, it is true, 
make men stagger like alcohol, but it as really 
blinds and deceives. Few of those who use alco- 
hol apprehend any injurious results. And just so 
it is with those who use tobacco ; some of both 
classes have at times awful convictions that its use 
is injurious, and will bring them through a wilder- 
ness of woes, prematurely to the grave ; but the 
cup in the one case, and the pipe or quid in the 
other, lulls their fears. 

" The common opinion," says Professor (now 
President) Hitchcock, " that tobacco in some of its 
forms is serviceable for headaches, weak eyes, 
purifying the breath, cold and watery stomachs, &c, 
is mere delusion." In process of time it produces 

5* 



52 THE NATURE 

all these, and numerous other ills. To take to- 
bacco for a cold and watery stomach would be like 
taking a portion of corrosive sublimate to antidote 
the corrosions of a dose of arsenic. To take to- 
bacco to purify the breath would be like turning a 
current of air from a common sewer into our parlors 
to sweeten them. And as to headache, and weak 
eyes, we promise the inveterate user of tobacco 
that as soon as he can get his system delivered 
from its influence, the aches of his head and the 
weakness of his eyes will leave him. But some 
will say, " We have been afflicted with these ills, 
and tobacco has given us relief." So says the 
spirit drinker. But we positively know, from per 
sonal experience, that all these ills have been pro- 
duced by tobacco ; and a very little knowledge of 
the nature of the article is sufficient to convince 
any man that its direct tendency is to produce 
them, unless it be employed to counteract the in- 
fluence of other poisons already in the system. 



OF TOBACCO. 53 



CHAPTER IT. 

THE INFLUENCE OF TOBACCO UPON THE BODY. 

We have in a measure, though quite naturally, 
anticipated what we propose as a separate topic of 
discussion. Let us now look directly at its physi- 
cal effects upon the human system. 

Tobacco is an article that ought not to be used 
even as a medicine, except in extreme cases, and 
in the hands of a very skilful physician. There 
are few articles of medicine more powerful and 
more dangerous in their use. The tea of a few 
grains introduced into the human body to relieve 
spasms, has been known to destroy life. Why 
then, it may be asked, can a person survive the 
swallowing of the juice of a large quantity ? Be- 
cause it powerfully excites the salivary glands, there- 
by diluting the juice and preventing its absorption, 
and by its cathartic and diuretic properties quickly 



54 PHYSICAL EFFECTS 

passes through the body. But it could not with 
any safety be retained in the stomach, and if taken 
into the system by being mixed with the food, 
the consequence would be quickly fatal. (See 
note A.) No man, in health, can make a daily 
use of it, to gratify his appetite, without certain in- 
jury to his constitution. He may not perceive the 
injurious effects for years, on account *of the imme- 
diate exhilaration ; but complicated chronic com- 
plaints will, after a time, creep upon him, making 
life a burden, and ending in premature dissolution, 
though he may impute his sufferings to other 
causes, and even die folded, in unsuspicious confi- 
dence, in the arms of his murderer. 

An individual, on observing how extensively 
tobacco was used, and how much it was loved, 
concluded there must be something very good in it ; 
" and so," says he, " I stepped out and bought 
myself a clean new pipe, and half an ounce of the 
best tobacco in general use, determined to try for 
myself, the boasted enjoyment I had heard great 
smokers say there was in a pipe. On my return 
home I commenced puffing away in good earnest, 



OF TOBACCO. 55 

and as I watched the smoke ascend in clouds above 
my head, I decided to persevere, until my pipe was 
out, notwithstanding I began to feel queer, and it 
made my tongue smart sorely ; however, I rued my 
determination, for long ere I had done puffing my 
head began to ache, and just when my pipe was 
out, a cold sweat came over me, and then a shiver- 
ing fit, and at last, nature, offended with the trick 
I had played her, by a fit of sickness, threw off 
some of the effects of the tobacco smoke." Such 
is almost invariably the effect of the first use of 
tobacco. It excites nausea, vomiting, dizziness, 
and then indigestion, mental dejection, and in short 
the whole train of nervous complaints. The very 
nature of tobacco is such that its daily use must 
ultimately derange the stomach and nerves, produce 
weakness, low spirits, dyspepsy, vertigo, and many 
other complaints. A man who can use tobacco for 
many years without experiencing great mental 
dejection, must possess an elasticity of constitution 
which no pressure can overcome, and a buoyancy 
of spirit which nothing but death can subdue. It 
dries the mouth and nostrils, benumbs the senses 
of smell and taste, impairs the hearing and eye- 



56 PHYSICAL EFFECTS 

sight ; it creates thirst and loss of appetite, and, in 
this, and other ways, often lays the foundation for 
intemperance. 

" I have long witnessed," says Dr. Agnew, " the 
deleterious effects produced by the constant use of 
that strong narcotic, such as vertigo, indigestion, 
flatulence, &c, which must necessarily be the in- 
separable concomitants of the application of such a 
narcotic stimulus to so large a portion of the ner- 
vous and secreting surface either in substance or 
vapor." 

Dr. Venner, in a work entitled Via recta ad 
vitam longam, published at London in 1638, gives 
a brief summary of the injuries done by tobacco. 
" It drieth the brain, dimmeth the sight, vitiateth 
the smell, hurteth the stomach, destroyeth the 
concoction, disturbeth the humors and spirits, cor- 
rupteth the breath, induceth a trembling of the 
limbs, exsiccateth the wind pipe, lungs, and liver, 
annoyeth the milt, scorcheth the heart, and causeth 
the blood to be adusted ; in a word, it overthroweth 
the spirits, perverteth the understanding, and con- 



OF TOBACCO. 57 

foundeth the senses with sudden astonishment and 
stupidity of the whole body." 

As there is a great difference in the constitutions 
of men, the effects of tobacco are not as speedily 
manifested in all, nor in the same way. Its va- 
rious, and sometimes apparently contrary effects, 
constitute a part of what we have been pleased to 
call the Mysteries of Tobacco. In some instances 
it produces a sensation of coldness about the head, 
in other instances a sensation of heat. It some- 
times produces cold feet, and at other times an 
unnatural heat. It causes the heart occasionally 
to intermit its pulsations, and sometimes causes it 
to palpitate, especially when lying upon the left 
side. It is a fruitful cause of piles, and, by de- 
ranging the system, prepares it for numerous dis- 
eases which afflict our race. It causes a thousand 
disagreeable and painful feelings which the poor 
victim knows not to be the necessary results of his 
pernicious indulgence. In mind and body he is 
miserable ; if asked to describe his feelings, he can 
only say, like the man possessed among the tombs, 
their name is legion. To find relief he chews 



58 PHYSICAL EFFECTS 

his quid, or sucks his pipe, or suffocates himself 
with tobacco dust, but instead of light, behold 
darkness and the shadow of death come upon 
him. We speak what we do know, and testify 
what we have seen ; — would that we knew less. 

" The great virtues of a pipe taken in the morn- 
ing fasting," says Mr. Jones, " are extolled by many, 
because, say they, it pumps up a quantity of cold 
phlegm from the stomach." Not to insist that 
nothing can be taken out of the stomach but by 
vomiting, let it be observed that the substance 
which is forcibly hawked up by many who have 
acquired this most disgustful habit is the mucus 
secreted by the mucous membrane to lubricate and 
defend the oesophagus, together with the saliva 
secreted by the glands. And this mucus and 
saliva are not less requisite in their respective places 
than the blood itself, as they are not only absolutely 
necessary for the defence of the parts already men- 
tioned, but also for the important purpose of diges- 
tion, which, if not properly promoted and carried 
on, the body cannot long continue in a healthy 
state. 

Says Dr. Rush, " I once lost a young man of 



OF TOBACCO. 59 

seventeen years of age, of a pulmonary consump- 
tion, whose disorder was brought on by the intem- 
perate use of cigars." Dr. Tissot ascribes sudden 
death in one instance to excessive smoking. In 
one instance ! The reformed smoker, who has felt 
and noted the evil effects of tobacco, is prepared to 
believe that thousands of sudden deaths are occa- 
sioned by it. We have consulted some of the most 
intelligent physicians in this country, and the 
united testimony of all who have turned their 
attention to this subject is, that it induces apoplexy, 
and is a fruitful source of numerous other diseases. 
Who then can witness groups of children in our 
streets with cigars in their mouths, without trem- 
bling for the results to themselves and posterity ? 
We have known boys at the age of eighteen all 
shrivelled up, and appearing like men in years, 
simply from the use of cigars. Let parents and 
guardians think of their responsibility. (See 
note B.) 

" By chewing tobacco," says Dr. McAllister, " all 

its deadly powers are speedily manifested in the 

commencement of the practice. In this mode, too. 

6 



60 PHYSICAL EFFECTS 

its nauseous taste, and stimulant property, excite 
and keep up a profuse discharge from the mucous 
fallicles and salivary glands. The great increase 
of this just before and after eating, and the large 
quantities swallowed about that time, is unequivo- 
cal evidence of its importance to the digestive 
economy. What then must be the state of that 
man's digestion, who, until seated at table, keeps 
his quid in his mouth, and immediately returns it 
thither after rising from his meal? And when 
we reflect that large quantities of saliva strongly 
impregnated with this poison, and even particles of 
the substance itself, are frequently swallowed, what, 
again I ask, is the probable condition of such a 
person's digestive organs V When such persons, 
however, are afflicted with dyspepsy, they never 
think of abandoning their tobacco as the cause, but 
after suffering awhile place themselves under a 
physician's care, and pour into their stomachs a 
quantity of medicine, and raise nature to its, wonted 
tone only to be knocked down again by tobacco. 

If the habitual use of tobacco did not produce 
the most fearful results, it w r ould be a mystery in 



OP TOBACCO. 61 

the philosophy of causes and their effects. A wri- 
ter in the Journal of Health says, " Experiments 
on animals show, that if a decoction of opium or 
tobacco be applied to the brain or spinal marrow, 
there is at first increased excitation of the heart, 
and ready contraction of the muscles : but after a 
time the circulation becomes more languid, and 
the muscles refuse to contract under any irritant 
even directly applied to them. The person who 
uses much tobacco has his nervous system affected 
in the same way : various secretions, or natural 
discharges from the different surfaces and glands, 
as of saliva from the mouth — mucus expectorated 
from the lungs — the gastric or digestive juice from 
the stomach — bile from the liver and so on, are, at 
first, all increased in quantity. But after a time, 
under the prolonged excitation of this noxious 
agent, all these are diminished — the mouth is dry 
and parched — the breast feels hot, and there is often 
hoarseness and dry cough — the stomach is per- 
verted in its office, and indigestion follows : and 
finally the liver, becoming sluggish and torpid, no 
longer secretes the due quantity of bile, and the 



62 PHYSICAL EFFECTS 

complexion losing its freshness, is of a turbid hue, 
or decidedly jaundiced." 

There are many persons, and especially ladies, 
who would feel disgraced to be seen with a quid or 
cigar in their mouth, who nevertheless daily, and 
almost hourly, powder themselves with snuff. This 
practice is quite as injurious, and equally as filthy, 
as the use of tobacco in other modes. " Friend," 
said one, " if Providence had designed that I should 
make a dust-hole of my nose, he would have 
turned it the other end up." 

"A person of my acquaintance," says Dr. Clarke, 
" who had been an immoderate snuff taker for 
upwards of forty years, was frequently afflicted 
with a sudden suppression of breathing, occasioned 
from a paralytic state of the muscles which serve 
for respiration. The only relief she got in such 
cases was from a cup of cold water poured down 
her throat. This became so necessary to her, that 
she could never venture to attend even a place of 
public worship without having a small vessel of 
water with her, and a friend at hand to administer 



OF TOBACCO. 63 

it ! At last she abandoned the snuff-box ; the mus- 
cles re-acquired their proper tone, and in a short time 
after she was entirely cured of her disorder, which 
was occasioned solely by her attachment to her snuff- 
box, and to which she had nearly fallen a martyr." 

" The least evil," says M. De Bomare, " which 
you can expect it to produce, is to emaciate the 
body, enfeeble the memory, and destroy, if not en- 
tirely, yet in a large measure, the delicate sense 
of smelling." " Common snuff," says a sensible 
medical practitioner, " in habitual snuff takers, has 
been found to penetrate into the sinuses commu- 
nicating with the nose, and into the antrum, 
where it has formed horrid abscesses : it is often 
carried down into the stomach, and by the use of 
it the skin is tinged of a pale brown color. This 
is sufficiently evident in all snuff takers. The 
most delicate females have their complexion en- 
tirely ruined by it. Strange that the snuff-box 
should be deemed too great a sacrifice for that for 
which most people are ready to sacrifice every 
thing beside. Many cases have been observed 

where the appetite has been almost destroyed, and 

6* 



64 PHYSICAL EFFECTS 

consumption brought on by the immoderate use of 
this powder." We were well acquainted with one 
aged gentleman, occupying a high station in socie- 
ty, who was ever complaining of coldness and dis- 
tresses in his head, to find relief from which he 
took a variety of medicines, never thinking that his 
difficulties were occasioned altogether by the use 
of snuff. He, however, continued the practice, and 
fell a victim. 

Dr. Maynwaring, in his treatise on the scurvy, 
has written largely against the use of this herb. 
He asserts in the most positive manner that it is a 
grand procuring cause of scorbutic complaints, 
and that the scurvy has abounded much more in 
those nations where it prevails, since the introduc- 
tion of tobacco, than it had ever done before. 

" The Indians," says Dr. Leake in the Encyclo- 
pedia Britannica, " poison their arrows with the 
oil of tobacco, which, infused into a fresh wound, 
occasions sickness and vomiting, or convulsions 
and death. With what safety then, setting aside 
propriety, the subtile powder of this plant, called 



OF TOBACCO. 65 

snuff, may be applied to the tender internal sur- 
face of the nose, it may be proper to inquire ; for 
if the oil of tobacco is a mortal poison when ap- 
plied to the open vessels of a wound, surely this 
plant, when taken in substance as snuff, must be 
injurious. From the infinite number of nerves 
diffused over the mucous membrane of the nose, it 
is endowed with exquisite feeling, and the better to 
preserve the sense of smelling, those nerves are 
continually lubricated with moisture. By the almost 
caustic acrimony of snuff this moisture is dried up, 
and those fine delicate nerves, the organs of smell- 
ing, are rendered useless and almost insensible. 
To this self-evident bad effect, may be added the 
narcotic, or stupefying power of tobacco, by which 
not only the brain and nerves are injured, but also 
the eyes, depending upon their influence." 

A snuffer may always be distinguished by a 
certain nasal twang — an asthmatic wheezing — 
and a sort of disagreeable noise in respiration 
which is nearly allied to incipient snoring. Snuff, 
also, frequently occasions fleshy excrescences in the 
nose, which, in some instances, end in polypi. In- 
dividuals have oftentimes a predisposition to cancer 



66 PHYSICAL EFFECTS 

in little scirrous intumescences, which, if kept easy 
and free from every thing of an irritating character, 
will continue harmless, but which the use of snuff 
sometimes frets into incurable ulcers and cancers. 
By the use of snuff, tumors are also generated in 
and around the throat, which obstruct deglutition, 
and even destroy life. Dr. Hill saw a female die 
of hunger, who could swallow no nourishment, 
because of a polypus which closed up the stomach, 
the formation of which was attributed to snuff. 
The drain of the juices by tobacco has a tendency 
to injure the muscles of the face, to render them 
flaccid, to furrow and corrugate the skin, and to 
give a gaunt, withered, and jaundiced appearance 
to the human face. 

" I recollect," says a French medical writer, 
" about twenty years since, while gathering simples 
one day in the Forest of Fontainbleau, I encountered 
a man stretched out upon the ground ; I supposed 
him to be dead, when, upon approaching, he asked 
in a feeble voice if I had some snuff; on my reply- 
ing in the negative, he sunk back immediately 
almost in a state of insensibility. In this condi- 



OF TOBACCO. 67 

tion he remained till I brought a person who gave 
him several pinches, and he then informed us that 
he had commenced his journey that morning, sup- 
posing he had his snuff-box with him, but found 
very soon he had started without it ; that he had 
travelled as long as he was able, till at last, over- 
come by distress, he found it impossible to proceed 
any further, and without my timely succor he 
would certainly have perished." 

Is it not strange that so many of our race are 
addicted to this vile practice ! The fact seems in- 
credible. It is at once amusing and painful to see 
the various preparations of tobacco advertised in 
our public prints. Invention is upon the rack to 
find new modes of applying the article to the 
human system. To chewing, smoking, snuffing, 
and plugging, what will next succeed ? 

" To such a height with some is fashion grown, 
They feed their very nostrils with a spoon ; — 
One, and but one degree is wanting yet 
To make their senseless luxury complete, 
Some choice regale, useless as snufF and dear, 
To feed the mazy windings of the ear." 



68 PHYSICAL EFFECTS 

For encouragement, we can assure those borne 
down with disease and misery, and who groan for 
freedom from their vile bondage to this unnatural 
appetite and practice, that liberty is possible and 
easy. The discontinuance of the practice will be 
your resurrection to life and health. The corro- 
sions and hankerings of your appetite will, in a 
short time, be subdued ; and you will find your- 
selves, without the article, happier, healthier, and 
wiser. We will give you one or two cases from 
McAllister's Dissertation. 

" A clergyman of high standing informed me 
that he acquired the habit of using tobacco in col- 
lege, and had continued the practice for a number 
of years ; but found, by experience, his health 
materially impaired ; being often affected with 
sickness, lassitude, and faintness. His muscles 
also became flabby, and lost their tone, and his 
speaking was seriously interrupted by an elongation 
of the uvula. His brother, an intelligent physi- 
cian, advised the discontinuance of his tobacco. 
He laid it aside. Nature, freed from its depressing 
influence, soon gave signs of returning vigor. His 



OF TOBACCO. 69 

stomach resumed its wonted tone, his muscles 
acquired their former elasticity, and his speaking 
was no more annoyed by a relaxation of the 
azygus uvulae. Another man, who used tobacco 
very sparingly, became affected with loss of appe- 
tite, sickness at the stomach, emaciation, and 
melancholy. From a conviction that even the 
small quantity he chewed was the source of his 
trouble, he entirely left it off, and very soon re- 
covered. 

" I was once acquainted with a learned, respect- 
able and intelligent physician, who informed me, 
that from his youth he had been accustomed to the 
use of this baneful plant, both by smoking and 
chewing. At length, after using it very freely 
while indisposed, he was suddenly seized with an 
alarming vertigo, which, without doubt, was the 
result of this destructive habit. This afflicting 
complaint was preceded by the usual symptoms 
which accompany a disordered stomach, and a 
relaxation of nerves. After the application of a 
variety of remedies to little or no purpose, he quit 
the deleterious practice, and though his vertigo 



70 PHYSICAL EFFECTS 

continued long and obstinate, he has nearly or 
quite recovered his former health. And he has 
never doubted that the use of tobacco was the 
cause of all his suffering from this disagreeable 
disease." We might present a much larger list of 
cases which have fallen under our own observation, 
illustrating the baneful influence of tobacco, and 
the successful and happy results of forsaking it. 
But at present we pass on. 



OF TOBACCO. 71 



CHAPTER III. 

THE INFLUENCE OF TOBACCO UPON THE MIND. 

We cannot subscribe to the opinion of a distin- 
guished physician who was one day addressed by 
a lady, " Doctor, do you think that snuff injures 
the brain of those who use it ?" " No," he replied, 
"for nobody that has any brains uses it." It is a 
fact, however, worthy of note in the history of tobac- 
co, that its use began among the ignorant savages. 
And " although," says Dr. Alcott, " many people of 
real intelligence become addicted to this practice, as 
is the case especially among the learned in Ger- 
many, yet it cannot be denied that, in general, those 
individuals and nations, whose mental powers are 
the weakest, are, (in proportion to their means of 
acquiring it,) most enslaved to it." Zimmerman 
says, " The Gypsies suspended their predatory 
excursions, and on an appointed night in every 
week assembled to enjoy their guilty spoils in the 

7 



72 MENTAL EFFECTS 

fumes of strong waters, and tobacco? The cen- 
sure of Chesterfield upon snuff taking is rather 
severe, although it applies equally to smoking and 
chewing. After characterizing the use of tobacco 
in any form as both vulgar and filthy, he adds, 
" Besides, snuff takers are generally very dull and 
shallow people, and have recourse to it merely as a 
fillip to the brain ; by all means, therefore, avoid 
the filthy custom." 

Dr. Rush relates that Sir John Pringle was 
afflicted with tremors in his hands, and had his 
memory impaired by the %ise of snvff ; but on 
abandoning the habit at the instance of Dr. 
Franklin, he found his potver of recollection 
restored, and he recovered the use of his hands." 
This is but a common effect of tobacco in all its 
forms, and the disuse of it will, in most instances, 
be attended with the same happy results. Mac- 
nish, in his Anatomy of Drunkenness, says, " The 
effects of tobacco are considerably different from 
those of any other inebriating agent. When used 
to excess, instead of quickening, it lowers the pulse, 
produces languor, depression of the system, giddi- 



OF TOBACCO. 73 

ness, confusion of ideas, violent pain in the 
stomach, vomiting, convulsions, and even death." 

The disastrous influence of tobacco upon the 
mind is no less fearful than upon the body. No 
tongue or pen can describe the intellectual ruins 
occasioned by it. If angels ever weep over self- 
inflicted tortures, they have mingled their tears 
over the unspeakable wretchedness of the tobacco 
consumer. The mental misery occasioned by alco- 
hol has often been affectingly set forth, and no one 
doubts that, like the devil, it tortures its worship- 
pers. But if the tobacco inebriate should tell his 
tale of mental wretchedness, it would be equally 
harrowing to every heart of tenderness. But it 
never has been told, and though a picture, dark as 
that midnight on which the Egyptian first born 
were slain, could be drawn, the whole amount of 
horror never can be told; because tobacco con- 
sumers never impute their misery to tobacco ; and 
because rum and tobacco often go hand in hand in 
the work of destruction ; and because a great de- 
gree of darkness still rests upon the whole commu- 
nity in relation to the influence of tobacco; and 



74 MENTAL EFFECTS 

because in proportion as the mind is weakened it is 
incapable of knowing or describing the process by 
which it has become so. 

Clergymen, and men generally, in the habit of 
public speaking, after using tobacco for a number 
of years, have found occasionally considerable diffi- 
culty in delivering their thoughts extemporaneously, 
or without previously writing them. To their 
astonishment and grief they have found themselves 
very much dependent upon frames and feelings. 
However well they may have studied their subject, 
and made their thoughts familiar, a trifling cir- 
cumstance has disconcerted them, and scattered all 
their well-arranged ideas to the wind. It was not 
always thus with them. Many have experienced 
this difficulty for years without knowing the cause. 
A glance at some individual of distinction in the 
congregation has at once deprived them of their 
wonted confidence and self-possession. This is the 
natural effect of the long-continued use of tobacco. 
It weakens the vigor of the intellect, so that with- 
out some excitement to raise it, the perception is 
dull, the ideas confused, the memory tardy, and 



OF TOBACCO. 75 

the power of expression sluggish. The abandon- 
ment of tobacco will, in the course of time, be the 
restoration of the intellect to its wonted vigor ; if 
its elasticity be not completely destroyed by the 
withering influence of this strong narcotic. 

After a person has learned to use tobacco, for 
a while its effects are exhilarating, and it seems to 
render the mind more vigorous, just like any other 
stimulant. It may be years in some constitutions 
before its work of destruction will be visible at all. 
Then, on immediately taking the pipe, or quid, or 
snuff, they seem rather to invigorate than to weak- 
en. They repair, momentarily, their own desola- 
tions. However obvious this may be to those who 
have examined the subject, it is one of the myste- 
ries of tobacco. Thousands are deceived thereby. 

Tobacco usually begins its work upon the mind 
by enfeebling the memory, by producing a confu- 
sion of ideas, by impairing one's confidence and 
self-possession, by weakening the power of concen- 
tration, and so on. It is a more prolific source of 

hypochondria than all other things united. It has 

7* 



76 MENTAL EFFECTS 

been known, like alcohol, to issue in delirium 
tremens. (See note C.) Why should it not ? Its 
nature is adapted to produce it. It has often 
stupefied and discouraged the student, bewildered 
the philosopher, and confused and darkened the 
divine. Many a splendid sermon has it enveloped 
in smoke. O, that some of its victims would speak 
out, — that some of those gigantic powers which it 
has prostrated could lift up their notes of warning ; 
they would send a thrill of anguish through the 
bones and marrow of every man who possesses the 
least spark of humanity or religion. 

" A respectable man of my acquaintance," says 
McAllister, "about forty years of age, who com- 
menced chewing tobacco at the age of eighteen, 
was for a long time annoyed by depression of 
spirits, which increased until it became a settled 
melancholy, with great emaciation, and the usual 
symptoms of that miserable disease. All attempts 
to relieve him proved unavailing, until he was per- 
suaded to dispense with his quid. Immediately 
his spirits revived, his countenance lost its dejec- 



OF TOBACCO. 77 

tion, his flesh increased, and he soon regained his 
health." ' 



Tobacco often produces insanity. We have the 
clearest evidence on this subject, and could give the 
names of persons, which, however, we are not at 
liberty to do, without consulting them and receiv- 
ing permission. The evidence of this, indeed, is 
clear from the fact that old tobacco users often 
become, at least, partially deranged when they, for 
a time, forsake the practice. A little reflection may 
convince us that any article, the discontinuance of 
which will produce derangement, will by its long- 
continued use produce the same results. If the 
discontinuance produces insanity, it is because the 
accustomed stimulus is removed. The system is 
made to depend on this something, out of itself, for 
its wanted vigor. A period then must arrive when 
no quantity of the article will be sufficient to keep 
the mind in equilibrium. It becomes like a harp, 
which, by being long strung, has lost its power. 
When this subject comes to be better understood, 
by being more fully investigated, we have no 
doubt it will be found to be as fruitful a source of 



78 MENTAL EFFECTS 

insanity as alcohol. Why should it not ? What is 
the nature of tobacco ? It contains as its basis a 
most powerful narcotic poison, possessing properties 
of the kind that opium does, with this addition, 
that it is more immediately irritating to the tissues 
of the body to which it is applied. Though for a 
season the system rejects and expels the nicotine, 
the most deadly of its properties, yet parts of its 
deleterious qualities without doubt mix with the 
chyle, which is to form part of the mass of blood, 
and is carried with it into the circulation, and 
courses through every vessel, and is exhaled at 
every pore. Few articles more powerfully affect 
the nervous system. No wonder that it impairs 
the memory of those who use it, weakens all their 
intellectual powers, and sends down its influence to 
posterity, so that the children of those who use it 
to excess are more liable to insanity. 

With what propriety may we apply to this sub- 
ject the language which is often used in reference 
to alcohol. We may ask, in relation to it, and 
with equal confidence, What organ in the human 
body needs this narcotic poison in order to perform 



OF TOBACCO. 79 

in the most perfect manner a healthy action? 
There is none. What gland can extract from it 
the least portion of nutriment, or any thing which 
can contribute to health, or be in any way 
useful in the animal economy? There is none. 
The anatomist, the physiologist, the chemist, and 
the physician examine with the minutest care 
every part throughout the whole body, and they 
can find none. God has made none, and there 
is none. Nor is there an organ whose healthy 
action is not disturbed by tobacco ; and which 
does not instinctively reject it. This is not for 
any want of kindness in the system towards 
friends, but because tobacco is an enemy ; a mortal 
enemy. It would be treason to harbor it, and 
suicide to use it. Nature, through unerring laws 
stamped by the divine hand, true to herself and 
her God, is incapable of such an offence ; and, till 
poisoned and perverted by the enemy, will never 
submit to it. On every organ it touches, tobacco is 
poison ; marking its course with irregularity of 
action, and disturbance of function ; exciting 
throughout the system a war of extermination, till 
the last remnant of the enemy is expelled from the 



80 MENTAL EFFECTS 

territory. Never, till vital power is prostrated, can 
the enemy have a lodgment. And if through 
decay of organic vigor, by the mighty force of the 
intruder, by the long continuance of the war, and 
by perpetual successions of new recruits, it cannot 
be expelled, the work of death is done ; — the last 
citadel of life surrenders, and the banner of univer- 
sal ruin waves over all. Thousands of such con- 
quests are made every year ; conquests of territories 
more valuable than all the material wealth of 
creation. Before, the prospect was like Eden, — 
afterward, like a land of sepulchres, with the 
shrivelled carcasses of tobacco consumers, sending 
up in clouds their poisonous exhalations, wafting 
contagion and death through the land. 

As tobacco tends to derange the healthy func- 
tions of the body, it tends also to disturb the regu- 
lar action of the mind. Often has it been whispered 
of the excessive tobacco consumer, " What is the 

matter of ? He was once a man of talent 

and influence, but his mind seems to be failing ; he 
is forgetful, and amazingly foggy in his communi- 
cations. What is the matter?" O, it is to be 



OF TOBACCO. 81 

hoped that the time is not far distant, when it will 
be understood what the matter is ! The use of 
tobacco tends to derange healthy mental action in 
another way, — by its irritating effect on the nerves. 
This leads in many cases to total insanity ; as, we 
believe, the records of every lunatic asylum in 
Christendom would testify if an accurate examina- 
tion and discovery could be made. 

There are some who suppose that tobacco can- 
not be very injurious to the body or mind, because 
there are many w T ho have used it from childhood 
to an advanced age. If the conclusion from these 
premises be correct, then alcohol cannot be very 
injurious, for there are many who have used that 
also, from early youth to a great age. Neither can 
opium be very injurious to the human system, for 
there are many also who have used that to excess 
for a great number of years. But alcohol destroys 
the life and happiness of multitudes in a short 
term of years ; so does opium, and so does tobacco. 
Take a youth and give him a small quantity of 
rum, and what is the consequence ? He is re- 
markably exhilarated, but perhaps for the time 



82 MENTAL EFFECTS 

being, no injurious effects are perceived. Give him 
now a small portion of opium, and you lay him in 
a gentle sleep. Now administer a small quantity 
of tobacco, and mark its effects : presently he turns 
pale, then a cold sweat comes over him, a general 
lassitude, and a nausea, deadly, and painful in the 
extreme. Judging from the effects, which now of 
these poisons is the most fearful? As a person 
continues the use of either of these drugs, it takes 
a greater quantity of alcohol to produce exhilara- 
tion, it takes more opium to produce sleep, and na- 
ture, after struggling for a while, submits to the tyr- 
anny of tobacco. It is no argument then in favor 
of tobacco, that many use it Without apparent in- 
jury for years. It is just this mode of reasoning 
that has blinded the minds of thousands in relation 
to alcohol. The reason why different individuals 
use these drugs with different immediate effects is, 
that there is a great variety of constitutions. Some 
have constitutions of iron, and some of the most 
frail materials. They are also used in very differ- 
ent quantities; and the habits and business of 
some is such as to enable them much longer to re- 
sist the action of these poisons. 



OF TOBACCO. 83 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE INFLUENCE OF TOBACCO ON THE MORALS. 

Looking at the moral influence of the habitual 
use of tobacco, it is not singular that in the early 
commencement of the habit, many thought it 
originated with the devil. The Abbot Nyssens 
thought it was the devil who first introduced it 
into Europe. It was unquestionably the obviously 
deleterious moral influence of the article which 
gave rise to such an opinion. There are some 
writers who have carried the original of tobacco 
into the fabulous ages of Greece, and attributed to 
Bacchus the glory of having discovered and dis- 
closed its virtues. Thorius, as Dr. Clarke tells us, 
very ominously ascribes the discovery and first use 
of this herb to Bacchus, Silenus, and the Satyrs, 
(drunkenness, gluttony, and lust,) and yet, observes 
the Doctor, his poem was written in its praise. 

Mr. Lamb in his poem has the same thought, and 

8 



84 MORAL EFFECTS 

farther adds as his belief that the tobacco plant 
was the true Indian conquest for which the jolly 
god has been so celebrated. He, moreover, inti- 
mates that the Thyrsus of that deity was after- 
wards ornamented with leaves of tobacco, instead 
of ivy. 

Shakspeare says, "O thou invisible spirit of 
wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us 
call thee — devil." But the very name of this plant 
is supposed by some to be derived from Bacchus, a 
principal leader in the camp of Satan. This is 
particularly mentioned by Joseph Sylvester, as 
quoted by Dr. Clarke, who wrote a poem on tobac- 
co which he inscribed to Villiers, Duke of Buck- 
ingham. The title of this tirade is characteristic 
of the age in which it was written. It is quaint 
indeed. " Tobacco battered, and the pipes shattered 
(about their ears who idly idolize so base and bar- 
barous a weed ; or at least- wise overlove so loath- 
some a vanity) by a volley of holy shot from 
Mount Helicon. 

" For even the derivation of the name 
Seems to allude and to include the same 



OP TOBACCO. 85 

Tobacco as ru Ba*x&> (To Bakcho) one would say 
To cup-god Bacchus dedicated ay." 

Tobacco prepares its victims for acts of barbarity 
in much the same way that alcohol does. We do 
not insinuate that all who use tobacco are cruel, 
nor are all those cruel who use rum. But tobacco 
frets and irritates the nerves, and after the system 
begins seriously to suffer from its use, it excites the 
passions, and things are seen with a false shape 
and coloring : 

" As in the night, imagining some fear, 
How easy is a bush supposed a bear." 

Catherine de Medicis, the person said to have 
prompted the horrible massacre of St. Bartholo- 
mew's day at Paris, is commonly regarded as the 
inventress of snuff taking. The placidity of to- 
bacco in its first stages gives way at a more ad- 
vanced period to irritability and fretfulness. 

In the commencement, u when used in modera- 
tion" says Macnish, " tobacco has a soothing effect 
upon the mind, disposing to placid enjoyment, and 
mellowing every passion into repose. Its effects, 



86 MORAL EFFECTS 

therefore, are inebriating : and those who habitu 
ally indulge in it may with propriety be denomi 
nated drunkards." Again he says, " We considei 
tobacco closely allied to intoxicating liquors, and 
its confirmed votaries as a species of drunkards." 

"What reception," says Dr. Rush, "may we 
suppose would the apostles have met with had they 
carried into the cities and houses to which they 
were sent, snuff-boxes, pipes, cigars, and bundles of 
cut, or rolls of hog, or pigtail tobacco." The 
practice of using tobacco does even now, notwith- 
standing its prevalence, produce in the minds of 
many an impression very unfavorable with respect 
to any minister or professed Christian : for, plead, 
excuse, and disguise it as you will, it is the intoxi- 
cating effect of tobacco that makes it loved and 
used. 

" Smoking and chewing tobacco," says Dr. Rush, 
" by rendering water and simple liquors insipid to 
the taste, dispose very much to the stronger stimu- 
lus of ardent spirits. The practice of smoking 
cigars has, in every part of our country, been more 



OF TOBACCO. 87 

followed by a general use of brandy and water as 
a common drink, more especially by that class of 
citizens who have not been in the habit of drink- 
ing wine or malt liquors. One of the greatest sots 
I ever knew, acquired a love for ardent spirits by 
swallowing cuds of tobacco, which he did to escape 
detection in the use of it ; for he had contracted 
the habit of chewing, contrary to the advice and 
commands of his father. He died of a dropsy 
under my care in the year 1780." It is unques- 
tionably the greatest obstacle existing to the pro- 
gress of temperance ; and never will this cause 
triumph ; never will alcoholic drinks be discarded 
as a beverage, until tobacco ceases to be used as a 
luxury. They must both die the same death and 
be interred in the same grave. " I am well ac- 
quainted with a man in a neighboring county," 
says Dr. McAllister, " whose intellectual endow r - 
ments would do honor to any station, and who has 
accumulated a handsome fortune, but whose habits, 
of late, give unerring premonition to his friends of 
a mournful result. This man informed me that it 
was the fatal thirst occasioned by smoking his 

cigar, in fashionable society, that had brought him 

8* 



88 MORAL EFFECTS 

into his present wretched and miserable condition. 
Without any desire for ardent spirits, he first sipped 
a little gin and water, to allay the disagreeable sen- 
sation brought on by smoking, as water was alto- 
gether too insipid to answer the purpose. Thus 
he went on from year to year, increasing his stim- 
ulus from one degree to another, until he lost all 
control over himself, and now he stands as a bea- 
con, warning others to avoid the same road to de- 
struction." 

That the use of tobacco bears very heavily 
against the cause of temperance will appear, upon 
reflection, to every one who wishes not to be de- 
ceived. Tobacco prostrates a man, and when thus 
prostrated no hand will lift him up like that of al- 
cohol ; or, in other w^ords, tobacco often produces 
sickness and a general lassitude, and alcoholic drinks, 
better than any other, will relieve this sickness and 
restore strength. Dyspepsy, produced by tobacco, 
is remedied, for the time being, by some alcoholic 
stimulant. When nature is bleeding under the 
lash of tobacco, she pleads for alcohol to bind up 
her wounds. Temperance men, therefore, who 



OF TOBACCO. 89 

use tobacco, often use alcoholic drinks without vio- 
lating their pledge ; for their pledge allows them to 
take it as a medicine ; and under the thousand va- 
rious ills occasioned by tobacco, they feel the need 
of some alcoholic stimulant to restore them, and it 
is often prescribed by their physician. But let them 
throw aside their tobacco and they will need none ; 
nature will move onward in her own strength, and 
find her own enjoyment. As long also as temper- 
ance men use their tobacco, others will plead it as 
a justification for using their occasional glass. That 
tobacco possesses an inebriating quality peculiarly 
its own, no man who has carefully examined its 
nature and effects, will presume to deny. It is as 
rational then to expect that the cause of temper- 
ance will triumph in China while they continue 
their opium, as to expect its final triumph in Amer- 
ica, while we continue our tobacco. ' (See note D.) 

Tobacco has a tendency to stupefy the mind and 
deaden the conscience. It holds its victims captive 
by a secret power which hardly any consideration 
can dispel. " Persons addicted to this habit," says 
a sensible writer, "like those confirmed in habits 



90 MORAL EFFECTS 

of intemperance, are lost to the influence of motives, 
of arguments, and of facts." It certainly would 
seem as if motives dissuading from this habit were 
heard in every voice, and wafted on every breeze. 
They are presented in the shrivelled aspect, in the 
nasal twang, in the foetid breath, in the sallow 
complexion, in the filthy habits, and in the numer- 
ous diseases occasioned by tobacco. They are 
thundered in our ears by the immoral companion- 
ship, the irreligious tendencies, the useless expense, 
and the suicidal nature of this habit. Yet all these 
are often found too feeble to induce even a profes- 
sor of religion to break off a habit which he is 
ashamed to own has much power over him, and 
for the continuance of which he cannot give one 
substantial reason . Sinister motives will sometimes 
accomplish what reason and religion fail to effect. 
A physician of high respectability informnd us of 
a lady under his care, moving in the higher circles 
of society, who was an inveterate snuff taker. He 
despaired of dissuading her from the practice by 
any motive relating to health or religion, and he 
therefore one day, as if by accident, remarked that 
excessive snuff taking injured the skin and gave it 



OP TOBACCO. 91 

a dark and dingy hue. She re-examined herself 
in the glass, and could not but observe that her 
complexion, which was formerly clear and beauti- 
ful, was extremely sallow. She threw her snuff- 
box in the fire, and it was but a short time before 
her friends, without knowing the cause, had occa- 
sion to congratulate her on her improved appear- 
ance. 

The Rev. Mr. Coan, an excellent missionary of 
the A. B. C. F. M. to the Sandwich Islands, has 
made the disuse of tobacco a test of church mem- 
bership. He found the use of it among the natives 
excessive, and its stupefying and intoxicating effects 
an insuperable obstacle to the influence of the gos- 
pel. The other missionaries, we believe, have 
adopted the same course. And there can be no doubt 
to a mind enlightened on this subject, that there is 
nothing among ourselves, except alcohol, which so 
obstructs the saving and sanctifying influence of 
the gospel. In the first place, it unfits the mind to 
receive the truth ; and in the second place, if it ob- 
tains any lodgment there it is feeble, and soon ex- 
pelled by this mighty spirit of evil. This, we are 



92 MORAL EFFECTS 

well aware, will be thought strong language to use 
in reference to tobacco, although it would not be 
thought too strong in relation to alcohol. Let the 
following question then be seriously considered, 
How can a mind be prepared profitably to receive 
and entertain religious truth, so much under the 
influence of a powerful narcotic, that the absence 
of it produces general uneasiness, a kind of vacan- 
cy of thought, and, in some instances, distraction ? 
It is in vain for those who use it to say that they 
cannot perceive any sensible impression from it. 
So says the spirit drinker when he has taken but 
one or two glasses. Take away the man's tobacco, 
and you put him to the torture. Has it then no 
influence upon him ? Strange that men should 
deny what is so perfectly obvious to those who 
have gained the conquest over their appetite. " O 
that men should put an enemy in their mouth to 
steal away their brains !" 

We may gather some idea of its influence upon 
the physical, mental, and moral sense, from the 
fact that it is generally thought much easier to 
quit the habit of using ardent spirits than to quit 



OF TOBACCO. 93 

the habit of using tobacco. So strong is its power 
over a man, that those addicted to it have no confi- 
dence in the final success of any attempt to leave 
it off. If one speaks unfavorably of its use, the 
question is, " How long since you quit the prac- 
tice ?" " Six months," perhaps is the reply. " Don't 
boast then," is the rejoinder, " before the year ex- 
pires you will be as deep in guilt as ever." A man 
must have quit it for years before any confidence 
will be felt that his victory is complete. It is like 
a right eye or a right hand, and how much soever 
it may cause us to offend, few have the strength of 
purpose to separate themselves from it forever. 

It is said that only " a small quantity of ardent 
spirits, taken so prudently as to leave a man in 
possession of his reason and the control of his 
limbs, is nevertheless adapted to bar the mind to 
good, and open it to evil." Why then should to- 
bacco be thought more favorably of? It as cer- 
tainly affects both body and mind. The harmony 
established by the divine hand between the men- 
tal and moral powers — the appetites of the body 
and the passions of the soul, it disturbs ; and brings 
reason and conscience into vile subserviency to ap- 



94 MORAL EFFECTS 

petite and passion. It weakens the motives to 
good, and strengthens the motives to evil. In di- 
rect and palpable violation of what the Saviour 
teaches us as the proper daily petition of every soul 
under heaven, it leads men into temptation, and 
delivers them to evil. Taking tt day by day," not 
" daily bread," but a poison of a most deceitful and 
malignant kind, that divine agent, who loathes it 
and all its effects as an utter abomination, and 
who would otherwise illuminate, and purify, and 
save with an everlasting salvation, is grieved away. 



OF TOBACCO. 95 



CHAPTER V. 

THE ILLUSORY INFLUENCE OF TOBACCO. 

The excitement occasioned by tobacco is illu- 
sive. It is mysterious to those who have not 
studied it. Many also are the illusions of men in 
relation to it. This is clear from the fact that the 
views of men, in reference to it, often undergo a 
very great change. Mr. Thomas Harriot, who 
first gave to the British public some account of to- 
bacco, entertained at first a high opinion of its vir- 
tues, but subsequently, after using it for a while, 
changed his opinion. We extract the following 
from the Medico-Chirurgical Review, vol. 37, No. 
32, page 339. 

"Harriot enlarges much on the virtues of this 
herb, concluding his eulogium with the remark, 
that those who employ it are not only freed from 
all kinds of obstructions in the system, but are, in 



96 ILLUSORY INFLUENCE 

addition j cured of those which they might chance 
to have, even though the complaint be of long 
standing. Master Harriot would seem, however, 
to have taken a spite towards tobacco subsequently, 
for in his Journal quoted by Knickerbocker, he 
says, of the Susquehanocks — i Their tobacco pipes 
were three quarters of a yard long, carved at the 
great end with a bird, bear, or other device, suffi- 
cient to beat out the brains of a horse !' (and how 
many asses' brains are beaten out, or rather men's 

brains smoked out, and asses' brains haled in, by 
our lesser pipes at home !") 

In the TEXNOFAMIA, or Marriage of the Arts 
by Barton Holiday, 1680, there is a singular 
poem on the subject of tobacco, where, in successive 
stanzas, it is compared to a musician, a lawyer, a 
"physician, a traveller, a cr it tike, an ignis fatuus, 
and a whyjler. Beloe's Sketches, vol. 2, page 10. 

It is indeed a Proteus. It is an insidious foe. 
No man is aware of its power over him, no one is 
sensible that it is doing him any injury, until it has 
inflicted upon him the sting of a scorpion. Men 



OF TOBACCO. 97 

under its influence often have, for a moment, most 
horrible convictions that it is deeply injuring them, 
but even then the very next instant they will resort 
to its use, and persuade themselves that it is a com- 
fort and a blessing. Out of the same mouth pro- 
ceedeth blessing and cursing on this stupefying, 
blinding weed. The extravagant and contradic- 
tory notes of the poet, Lamb, will be perfectly un- 
derstood by those who have been initiated into the 
mysteries of tobacco. His health, it appears, had 
suffered seriously from its immoderate use, in con- 
sequence of which it was interdicted by his physi- 
cian. Compelled to surrender his favorite enjoy- 
ment, he vents his feelings in a spirited Farewell 
to Tobacco, which exhibits a singular mixture of 
opposite sentiments and of violent struggles between 
his propensity to the habit, and his acquiescence in 
the necessity which severs him from it, together 
with a feeble attempt to curse that, without which 
life to the unhappy poet seemed scarcely endura- 
ble. Thus warbles his harp, discordant with the 
perfumes of tobacco : 

" Stinking' st of the stinking kind, 
Filth of the mouth and fog of the mind, 



98 ILLUSORY INFLUENCE 

Africa that brags her foyson, 
Breeds no such prodigious poison ; 
Henbane, night-shade, both together 
Hemlock, aconite — 

— Nay, rather, 
Plant divine of rarest virtue ; 
Blisters on the tongue would hurt you ; 
'Twas but in a sort I blamed thee, 
None e'er prospered who defamed thee." 

No tyrant ever held a slave with such power — 
vexed at their captivity, and yet planting a kiss 
upon the hand that rules them. One instant they 
will spit out their enemy, vexed at their imbecility 
and folly, and the next deposit it in their cheek 
with a smile. 

To such a degree have the nature and influen- 
ces of tobacco been misapprehended, that it has 
been regarded as a grand panacea. The same ex- 
travagant things have been said of it that have 
been said of rum ; and if the Prince of darkness in- 
cites men to the use of alcohol, he incites them to 
the use of tobacco. To the practice of both the 
same voice allures. Read the triple eulogy of 
Bayle upon the Cardinal Santa Croce, tobacco, and 



OF TOBACCO. 99 

the cross. First let me observe that the Cardinal 
Santa Croce first introduced tobacco into Italy. 
His ancestors had the reputation of having brought 
into the same country the wood of the true cross. 
Thus speaks Bayle as translated by M. de Maizeaux : 

" The herb which borrows Santa Croce's name 

Sore eyes relieves, and healeth wounds ; the same 

Discusses the king's evil, and removes ' 

Cancers and boils ; a remedy it proves 

For burns and scalds, repels the nauseous itch, 

And straight recovers from convulsion fits. 

It cleanses, dries, binds up, and maketh warm ; 

The head-ache, tooth-ache, colic, like a charm 

It easeth soon ; an ancient cough relieves, 

And to the reins, and milt, and stomach, gives 

Quick riddance from the pains which each endures ; 

Next the dire wounds of poisoned arrows cures ; 

All bruises heals, and when the gums are sore, 

It makes them sound and healthy as before. 

Sleep it procures, our anxious sorrows lays, 

And with new flesh the naked bones arrays. 

No herb hath greater power to rectify 

All the disorders in the breast that lie, 

Or in the lungs. Herb of immortal fame ! 

Which hither first by Santa Croce came, 

When he (his time of nunciature expired) 

Back from the court of Portugal retired ; 

9* 



100 ILLUSORY INFLUENCE 

Even as his predecessors great and good, 
Brought home the cross, whose consecrated wood 
All Christendom now with its presence blesses ; 
And still the illustrious family possesses 
The name of Santa Croce, rightly given, 
Since they, in all respects resembling heaven, 
Procure as much as mortal man can do, 
The welfare of our souls and bodies too." 

Now all this is as true as that alcohol is the " wa- 
ter of life"' or the " Essence of life," as in its early 
days it was thought to be, and that the taking a 
portion every day would make a man live forever. 
Recent discoveries have made it manifest that it is 
the quintessence of death. Negative every asser- 
tion of Bayle, and you will have a part of the sad 
truth in relation to tobacco. It is indeed a most 
fruitful source of poverty, misery, pain, disease and 
death. 

Most heroes and conquerors are proud of their 
exploits, and wish them told by the trumpet tongue 
of fame. Not so with the devil. He wishes a 
dead silence about his victories and his means of 
conquest. Thinking that the dedication of this 



OF TOBACCO. 101 

weed to one of his prime agents, Bacchus, might 
impair its wide-spread, deadly influence, he made 
an effort to give it another name, and call it after 
John Nicot, who first introduced it into France. 
He succeeded, however, in affixing it, nicotiana, only 
as its botanical surname. To us, however, it seems 
exceedingly proper that it should take part of the 
name of Nicot. " Old Nic, "would be an appropri- 
ate name — it would foil the devil in his device — 
and might help some to understand its nature. As 
it is employed in his service, let it bear his name. 
The Indians were accustomed to use it in order to 
open a conference with the Spirit of evil. Says 
Bigelow, in his Medical Botany, " Tobacco was in 
use among the aborigines of America at the time 
of its discovery. They employed it as incense in 
their sacrificial ceremonies, believing that its odor 
was grateful to their gods. The priests of some 
tribes swallowed the smoke of it to excite in them 
a spirit of divination, and this they did to a degree 
which threw them into a stupor of many hours' con- 
tinuance. When recovered from this fit of intoxi- 
cation, they asserted that they had held a confer- 
ence with the devil, and had learned from him the 



102 ILLUSORY INFLUENCE 

course of future events. Their physicians also got 
inebriated with this smoke, and pretended that 
while under the influence of this intoxication, they 
were admitted to the council of the gods, who re- 
vealed to them the event of diseases." Let chris- 
tian ministers beware of such influences. It is well 
worth enquiry whether those pleasing dreams in 
duced by tobacco, and those devotional feelings, are 
not of a nature very different from what they pass 
for. The Indians had not learned to be ashamed 
of intoxication, and they were free to admit that 
such was the influence of tobacco ; or, in other 
words, they acknowledged its power to withdraw 
them from the world of sensible realities, and in- 
troduce them into the world of visions and dreams. 

The excitement occasioned by tobacco is inebri- 
ety ; and when a man is intoxicated he is not him- 
self. He is happier, better, and richer than he in 
reality is ; but, strange, as the influence passes 
away he is poorer, and more wretched, and more 
miserable. He pendulates from one extreme to an- 
other. He must wholly recover from the effects of 
tobacco, before he can look at things as they are. 



OF TOBACCO. 103 

The excessive snuffer often appears, in many re- 
spects, like a person intoxicated, although he is no 
more so than he who chews or smokes. " The 
smoker," says Macnish, in his Anatomy of Drunk- 
enness, "while engaged in his occupation, is even a 
happier man than the snuffer. An air of peculiar sat- 
isfaction beams upon his countenance ; and as he 
puffs forth volumes of fragrance, he seems to dwell 
in an atmosphere of contented happiness. His il- 
lusions have not the elevated and magnificent char- 
acter of those brought on by opium or wine. There 
is nothing of Raphael or Michael Angelo in their 
composition — nothing of the Roman or Venitian 
schools — nothing of Milton's sublimity or Areosto's 
dazzling romance ; but there is something equally 
delightful, and in its way equally perfect. There 
is an air of delightful homeliness about them. He 
does not let his imagination run riot in the clouds, 
but restrains it to the lower sphere of earth, and 
meditates delightfully in this less elevated region. 
If his fancy be unusually brilliant, or somewhat 
heated by previous drinking, he may see thousands 
of strange forms floating in the tobacco smoke. He 
may people it according to his temperature with 



104 ILLUSORY INFLUENCE 

agreeable or revolting images — with flowers and 
gems springing up as in dreams before him — or 
with reptiles, serpents, and the whole host of dia- 
blerie, skimming like motes in the sunshine, amid 
its curling wreaths." We are aware that some 
will scout the idea that tobacco is intoxicating. 
Let such inform themselves of its nature. We will 
also ask them, For what do you use tobacco ? It 
is not that the taste is agreeable ; for, whatever 
taste for it you may have succeeded in creating, 
there are times when, owing to the peculiar state 
of your system or mouth, it is unpleasant ; yet you 
use it ; and why ? Is it not for its mild illusions — 
its sketches of fancy — its scenes of delight ? Take 
away that peculiar property by which it acts upon 
the nerves, and no man would use a particle of it 3 
any more than he would use wine when the alco- 
hol is extracted. The intoxicating effects of tobac- 
co are so mild and gentle, and they pass off so in- 
sensibly, that the consumers of the article are 
scarcely aware of its influence. Let them lay it 
aside ; and the uneasiness, the vacuity and tremors, 
occasioned by the discontinuance, may give them 
some idea of the effects of its habitual use. Ex* 



OF TOBACCO. 105 

cessive tobacco consumers are ever complaining of 
disagreeable feelings, and yet so deceived are they 
that they are ever resorting to the cause of their 
ills to find relief. To hear them enumerate the 
ills with which they are afflicted, you would sup- 
pose them the greatest of valetudinarians ; and no 
doubt many of them are, and have become so by 
the use of the very plant which they think such a 
sovereign remedy for all their diseases. If they are 
too hot or too cold, too wet or too dry, on a jour- 
ney or at home, busy or idle, or whatever their pe- 
culiar circumstances are, they feel a pressing ne- 
cessity for tobacco. Yet in most instances it is 
adapted, in its very nature, to produce the com- 
plaints it is taken to relieve ; and it is well known 
in thousands of instances to produce them. We 
have seldom seen a tobacco consumer, though con- 
tending at the time that it is not injurious, but 
would say, "I never advise any one to use it; I 
recommend my children and others never to touch 
it." Nearly all of them acknowledge that at times 
it produces unpleasant feelings, and they are obli- 
ged occasionally to forsake it. We this day con- 
versed with a gentleman who said, respectfully, 



106 ILLUSORY INFLUENCE 

that he could not agree with us in our views of to- 
bacco, for he had used it twenty years, and it had 
never injured him; but with almost the same 
breath, he said, it often made him feel bad, and he 
was obliged to moderate his dose for a time. 

Many profess to use it to invigorate their intel- 
lectual powers, though it is eminently calculated to 
cloud and confuse them. Often has a clergyman 
had a subject open to him with beauty and clear- 
ness. Pleased with his prospect of producing an 
interesting and useful discourse, he has resorted to 
his pipe to regale himself, and sharpen his mind. 
Smoking being over, he has taken his pen, and to 
his surprise has found his thoughts sluggish ; a 
cloud has settled upon his subject, the way-marks 
which he had set appear indistinct, and after strug- 
gling for awhile, he has felt obliged to lay down his 
pen, take his hat and cane, and promenade for a 
time to restore his mind to its former state. Many 
subjects in this way have been lost to clergymen, 
The tobacco which they have taken to quicken 
them has been the cause of confusing their ideas, 
and measurably expelling the subjects from their 



OF TOBACCO. 107 

minds. Perhaps they have never understood that 
tobacco has done the mischief. 

You perceive that this child of Bacchus bloios 
hot and blows cold. His is a universal panacea : 
it is equally good for complaints the most opposite. 
It comes labelled a cure all, but it is indeed a kill all. 
O, it is 

" False as the smooth, deceitful sea, 
And mischievous as hell." 

The man thinks it a servant, that will go and 

come at his bidding ; but it is the master — he is 

the servant. A clergyman of high respectability 

informed us, that he had often put a quid in his 

mouth, and wept like a child under a sense of his 

vile bondage to this contemptible weed. For a 
considerable length of time he continued, often 

weeping over his impotency, (and he was one of 
the last men you would have suspected as wanting 
firmness and fortitude,) and making inefficient at- 
tempts to sunder the bonds by which he was held, 
until, at length, in the strength of the Lord, he pro- 
tested he would be free, — and he was free. 



10 



108 THE FILTHINESS 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE FILTHINESS OF TOBACCO. 

That the use of tobacco is uncleanly and filthy, 
is generally acknowledged, even by the consumers 
themselves. Many who use it secretly, on account 
of its filthiness, are ashamed to use it openly. 
Some home thrusts which they occasionally receive 
we should suppose sufficient to break up any habit. 
A clergyman of our acquaintance of high standing, 
and extensively known both in this country and in 
Europe, and highly esteemed for the vastness of 
his erudition, and his popular talents, informed us 
that formerly, when he used tobacco, his excellent 
wife would sometimes say, " My dear husband, why 
will you use that loathsome weed ? you know not 
how offensive it is. It is my privilege to find 
pleasure in kissing you, but I am deprived of it by 
the disagreeable odor of your tobacco !" 

Which mode of using it is the most filthy is a 



OP TOBACCO. 109 

point disputed, which clearly indicates all modes 
to be nearly at par with each other. Of snuffing, 
says Macnish, " If it were attended with no other 
inconvenience, the black loathsome discharge from 
the nose, and the swelling and rubicundity of this 
organ, with other circumstances equally disagree- 
able, ought to deter every man from becoming a 
snuffer." Says a writer in the Methodist Quarter- 
ly, " Whether the rock goat or the tobacco- worm 
first taught imitative man to masticate tobacco, we 
are ignorant. One thing, however, is most certain, 
that of all modes of using it, chewing seems most 
vulgar and ungentle manlike ; and it is worthy of 
particular remark that in our country it is more 
used in this manner, among the better classes of 
society, than in any other part of the world." In 
some parts of Europe a tobacco chewer is scarcely 
regarded as a gentleman. Says Dr. Alcott, " Smo- 
king is indecent, filthy, and rude, and to many in- 
dividuals highly offensive. When first introduced 
into Europe, in the sixteenth century, its use was 
prohibited under very severe penalties, which in 
some countries amounted even to cutting off the 
nose. And how much better is the practice of vol- 



110 FILTHINESS 

untarily burning up our noses by making a chim- 
ney of them." The effects of smoking upon the 
clothes and breath, and indeed upon the whole 
body, are most offensive. What is more overpow- 
ering than the stale smell, remaining in a room 
where several persons have been smoking ? King 
James does not forget to note this habit as a breach 
of good manners. " It is," says he, " a great vanitie 
and uncleannesse." One thing is certain, that be- 
tween smokers, snuff takers, and chewers, boasting 
is excluded. To each of the practices is awarded 
by different judges, the infamy of being the most 
injurious and uncleanly. 

Art has employed its skill to render tobacco more 
filthy than it is in its own nature. Simon Pauli, 
physician to the King of Denmark, has written a 
treatise on the danger of using this herb, and ob- 
serves, that " the merchants frequently lay it in bog 
houses, to the end that becoming impregnated with 
the volatile salts of the excrements, it may be ren- 
dered brisker, stronger and more foetid." "A deal- 
er in this article once acknowledged to me," says 
Dr. Clarke, " that he sprinkled his rolls and leaf 



OF TOBACCO. Ill 

frequently with stale urine to keep them moist and 
to preserve the flavor." A friend of mine whose 
curiosity led him to see tobacco spinning, observed 
that the boys who opened out the dry plants, had 
a vessel of urine by them with which they moist- 
ened the leaves to prepare them for the spinner !" 
This practice may be discontinued in some places, 
but the possibility of obtaining such an article we 
should suppose would be an additional motive to 
deter from its use. It is, we believe, a very gener- 
al practice among cigar makers to take water into 
their mouths, and spurt it upon the leaves to moist- 
en them. 

It may help to illustrate our position to give you 
the history of " One day and a half in the life of a 
Tobacco Chewer." We take it from an Eastern 
periodical. 

" Mr. Editor : — Do you chew tobacco ? I did 
till last Sunday, when I put my veto on the 
practice. The why and the wherefore I send you, 
hoping that if you are guilty of using the Indian 

10* 



112 FILTHINESS 

weed, a leaf from my diary may be the means of 
reforming you. 

Saturday, Oct. 19, 1833. Took my hat for a 
walk ; wife, as wives are apt to, began to load me 
with messages, upon seeing me ready to go out. 

Asked me to call at cousin M 's, and borrow for 

her the " Sorrows of Werter." — Hate to have a wife 
read such namby, pamby stuff — but must humor 
her whims, and concluded that I had rather she 
should take pleasure over "Werter's Sorrows" than 
employ her tongue in making sorrows for your 
humble servant. 

Got to cousin M 's door. Now cousin M. is 

an old maid, and a dreadful tidy woman. — Like 
tidy women well enough, but can't bear your 
dreadful tidy ones, because I am always in dread 
while on their premises, lest I should offend their 
superlative neatness by a bit of gravel on the soles 
of my boot, or such matter. 

Walked in — delivered my message, and seated 
myself in one of her new cane-bottomed chairs, 



OP TOBACCO. 113 

while she rumaged the book-case. Forgot to take 
out my Cavendish before I entered, and while she 
hunted, felt the tide rising. No spit-box in the 
room. Windows closed. Floor carpeted. Stove 
varnished. Looked to the fireplace — full of flow- 
ers, and hearth newly daubed with Spanish brown. 
Here was a fix. Felt the flood of the essence of 
Cavendish accumulating. — Began to reason with 
myself whether it were better, as a last alternative, 
to drown the flowers, redaub the hearth, or flood 
the carpet. — Mouth in the mean time pretty well 
filled. To add to my misery, she began to ask 
questions. " Did you ever read this book, Mr. 

.?" "Yes, ma'am," said I, in a voice like a 

frog in the bottom of a well, while I wished book, 
aunt, and all, were with Pharaoh's host in the Red 
Sea. " How did you like it V continued the inde- 
fatigable querist. I threw my head on the back 
of the chair, mouth upwards, to prevent an over- 
flow. u Pretty well," said I. She at last found 
the " Sorrows of Werter," and came towards me. — 
" Oh dear, cousin Oliver, don't put your head on 
the back of the chair, now don't, you'll grease it, 
and take off the gilding." I could not answer her, 



114 FILTHINESS 

having now lost the power of speech entirely, and 
my cheeks were distended like those of a toad un- 
der a mushroom. " Why, Oliver," said my perse- 
vering tormentor, unconscious of the reason of my 
appearance, " you are sick, I know you are, your 
face is dreadfully swelled !" and before I could pre- 
vent her, her hartshorn was clapped to my distend- 
ed nostrils. As my mouth was closed imperturba- 
bly, the orifices in my nasal organ were at that 
time my only breathing places. Judge, then, what 
a commotion a full snuff of hartshorn created among 
my olfactories ! 

I bolted for the door, and a hearty a-chee-he hee 
relieved my proboscis : and tobacco, saliva, &c, 
" all at once disgorged" from my mouth, restored 
me the faculty of speech. Her eyes followed me 
in astonishment, and I returned, and relieved my 
embarrassment by putting a load on my con- 
science. I told her I had been trying to relieve 
the toothache by the temporary use of tobacco, 
while, truth to tell, I never had an aching fang in 
my head. I went home mortified. 



OP TOBACCO. 115 

Sunday forenoon. Friend A— — invited my- 
self and wife to take a seat with him, to hear the 
celebrated Mr. preach. Conducted by neigh- 
bor A. to his pew. Mouth, as usual, full of tobac- 
co ! and, horror of horrors, found the pew elegantly 
carpeted, white and green, two or three mahogany 
crickets, and a hat stand ; but no spit-box ! ! The 
service commenced ; every peal on the organ was 
answered by an internal appeal from my mouth 
for a liberation from its contents : but the thing 
was impossible. I thought of using my hat for a 
spit-box ; then of turning one of the crickets over ; 
but I could do nothing unperceived. I took out 
my handkerchief, but found that in the plenitude 
of her officiousness, my wife had placed one of her 
white cambricks in my pocket, instead of my ban- 
danna. Here was a dilemma. By the time the 
preacher had named his text, my cheeks had 
reached their utmost tension, and I must spit or 
die. I arose, seized my hat, and made for the 
door. My wife (confound these women, how they 
dog one about !), imagining me unwell (she might 
have known better), got up and followed me. 
"Are you unwell, Oliver?" said she, as the door 



116 FILTHINESS 

closed after us. I answered her by putting out the 
eyes of an unlucky dog with a flood of expressed 
essence of Cavendish. "I wish," said she, "Mr. 

A had a spit-box in his pew." " So do I." We 

footed it home in moody silence. I was sorry my 
wife had lost the sermon, but how could I help it ? 
These women are so affectionate — confound them 
— no, I don't mean so. But she might have known 
what ailed me, and kept her seat. 

Tobacco ! oh Tobacco ! But the deeds of that 
day are not all told yet. After the conclusion of 
service along came Farmer Ploughshare. He had 
seen me go out of church, and stopped at the open 

window where I sat. " Sick to-day, Mr. ?" 

" Rather unwell," answered I, and there was an- 
other lie to place to the account of tobacco. u We 

had powerful preaching, Mr. : powerful 

preaching; sorry you had to go out," My wife 
asked him in, and in he came — she might have 
known he would, but women must be so polite. 
But she was the sufferer by it. — Compliments over, 
I gave him my chair at the open window. Down 
he sat, and fumbling in his pocket, drew forth a for- 



OP TOBACCO. 117 

midable plug of tobacco, and commenced untwist- 
ing it. "Then you use tobacco," said I. "A lit- 
tle occasionally," said he, as he deposited from three 
to four inches in his cheek. " A neat fence that of 
yourn," as flood after flood from his mouth bespat- 
tered a newly painted white fence near the window. 
— " Yes," said I, " but I like a darker color." " So 
do I," answered Ploughshare, and " yaller suits my 
notion : it don't show dirt." And he moistened 
my carpet with his favorite color. Good, thought 
I, wife will ask him in again, I guess. We were 
now summoned to dinner. Farmer Ploughshare 
seated himself. I saw his long fingers in that par- 
ticular position in which a tobacco chewer knows 
how to put his digits when about to unlade. He 
then drew them across his mouth — I trembled for 
the consequences, should he throw such a load 
upon the hearth or floor. But he had no intention 
thus to waste his quid, and — shocking to relate — 
deposited it beside his plate, on my wife's damask 
cloth ! 

This was too much. I plead sickness and rose. 
There was no he in the assertion now, I was sick. 



118 FILTHINESS 

I retired from the table, but my departure did not 
discompose Parmer Ploughshare, who was uncon- 
scious of having done wrong. I returned in season 
to see Farmer Ploughshare replace his quid in his 
mouth to undergo a second mastication, and the 
church bell opportunely ringing, called him away 
before he could use his plate for a spit-box ; for such 
I am persuaded would have been his next move- 
ment. I went up stairs, and throwing myself on 
the bed, fell asleep. Dreams of inundations, floods 
and fires harassed me. I thought I was burning 
and smoked like a cigar. I then thought the Mer- 
imack had burst its banks, and was about, to over- 
flow me with its waters. I could not escape — the 
water had reached my chin — I tasted it — it was 
like tobacco juice. I coughed and screamed, and 
awakening found I had been asleep with a quid in 
my mouth. My wife entering at the moment, I 
threw away the filthy weed. " Huz, if I were you 
I would not use that stuff any more !" " I won't," 
said I. Since Sunday I have kept my word. Nei- 
their fig, nor twist, pig-tail nor Cavendish, have 
passed my lips, nor ever shall they again." 



OF TOBACCO. 119 

Notwithstanding the ludicrous turn which this 
writer gives his thoughts, there is " more truth than 
poetry" in his vivid description of the filthiness of 
the practice upon which we are descanting. The 
mucous discharges from the snuffer, the smoker, 
and the chewer, are most disgusting and loathsome 
to every living thing that moveth upon the earth. 

What a public mortifying declaration of the fil- 
thiness of this practice has sometimes been made 
in the difficulty which ecclesiastical bodies have oc- 
casionally experienced in obtaining a place in which 
to hold their sessions ; — congregations being unwill- 
ing to have their places of public worship polluted 
with the filthy discharges of tobacco chewers. 
What a public protestation of the filthiness of the 
practice in the large prints suspended upon the 
walls of some churches, " Gentlemen are requested 
not to use tobacco in this house." Even in our 
rail-road cars, and aboard our steamboats, which 
sometimes appear as if mangled and scarred by to- 
bacco, public testimony is borne to the indecency 
and ungentlemanliness of the practice, in the notices 

which, in glaring capitals, meet the eye : " No 

11 



120 FILTHINESS 

SMOKING IN THIS CAR." " No SMOKING ABAFT 

the wheels." If men will practice what is re- 
garded as so indecent and offensive, they are com- 
manded to put themselves in a position where the 
winds of heaven will most speedily scatter their un- 
savory perfume. If the practice were decent and 
gentlemanly, why should it be banished to the 
greatest distance from the presence and influence 
of females, and restricted to a part of the boat 
marked out as the receptacle of unavoidable filthi- 
ness and the filthy ? When gentlemen go forward 
to puff their cigars they proclaim their own shame ; 
— they say publicly, " We are not fit companions 
for the decent and refined." Many houses of pub- 
lic worship are rendered most disgustingly filthy 
by this practice, and many pulpits present a spec- 
tacle at sight of which the stomach of a decent 
man heaves. No man who sets any value upon 
decency or politeness, presumes, at the present day, 
to smoke in presence of respectable people, or in 
any decent room. Yet how large a proportion of 
the community are indulging in the habit, either 
secretly, or in the filthy apartments devoted to the 
practice, or in the streets. Whoever witnessed with 



OP TOBACCO. 121 

any other feelings than those of abhorrence, the 
black drop on the nose, or the dirty lip of the snuff- 
er, the foetid, sickening breath of the smoker, the 
filthy mouth, yellow teeth, and nauseous puddle of 
the chewer ? It is surprising that all tobacco users 
are not cured by the sight of one another. The 
son of a notorious drunkard once came home intox- 
icated, and behaved in a very foolish and indecent 
manner. The father looked on mortified — then 
said to his wife, " Wife, tell me, do I act as silly 
when I take too much, as Bill does ?" " Why yes," 
she replied, " and a great deal more so." " Then," 
said he, laying his hat on the table with a great 
show of purpose, " by my old hat, I'll never taste 
another drop." And he never did. Could tobacco 
consumers once become a little sober from disuse, 
and then come in contact with the persons who use 
it, and enter the places polluted by the habit, and 
inhale the stale perfumes, they might perhaps be 
provoked to a similar purpose. Many smokers are 
measurably aware of the disagreeable odor that 
goes forth from them, and hence, when you ap- 
proach, they will kindly draw back, or put their 
hand to their mouth, that they may not offend 



122 FILTHINESS 

you with their filthy breath. Even the children 
in our Sabbath schools have been known to com- 
plain that the breath of their teacher was so offen- 
sive, they could not endure his presence. These 
things are so. Observing men know them to be 
so. But so they ought not to be. Will consider- 
ate men, after the subject is brought before them, 
so debase themselves to gratify an unnatural appe- 
tite ! Will teachers in our Sabbath schools make 
those bodies which should be the temples of the 
Holy Ghost, so foetid and corrupt, that the associa- 
tion to a child should be any thing but pure ? We 
will now turn from this most disgusting picture^ 
and glance at the expensiveness of tobacco. 



OF TOBACCO. 123 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE EXPENSIVENESS OF TOBACCO. 

This is a serious evil, whether we regard the 
necessities of most families, or the claims of individ- 
uals and the public, upon our benevolence. The 
expense, upon investigation, will be found much 
more than is generally imagined. It is among " the 
little foxes that spoil the vines" — one of the small 
streams that dry up and exhaust a fountain of 
wealth. Suppose a young man to spend twelve 
and a half cents a week for this article ; — in fifty 
years it would yield him at compound interest about 
fifteen hundred dollars ; and at twenty-five cents a 
week it would yield, in the same time, between 
three and four thousand dollars. Six cents a clay 
for cigars, allowing annual interest, would, in thirty 
years, amount to three thousand. Jive hundred 
and twenty-nine dollars, and thirty cents ! — A 

handsome sum against the infirmities of declining 

11* 



124 EXPENSIVENESS 

years. But there are a very large number whose 
cigars cost them more than seventy dollars a year 
— Here then is a fortune smoked away in a few 
years. When a young man is seen with a cigar 
in his mouth it would be well to raise the alarm by 
the cry of fire ! fire ! fire ! Put out his cigars and 
you may save him a splendid house, and a life be- 
side. If you see a little smoke issuing from a crev- 
ice of your neighbor's building, you give the note 
of alarm, and yet perhaps there is not half the dan- 
ger, — not near the amount of damage would accrue, 
were the whole to be consumed, that may result 
from that young man's smoking. Sir Walter Ra- 
leigh, who first brought tobacco into fashion in 
England, was accustomed, at first, to smoke secret- 
ly. One day having sent his servant for some beer, 
he entered, and for the first time saw his master 
fumigating his pipe. Supposing his master's head 
on fire, on seeing the smoke issue from his mouth, 
he threw the pot of beer directly in his face. Hap- 
py would it have been for Sir Walter had he taken 
the hint ; and thrice happy for every young man 
who treats tobacco as Solomon teaches us to treat 



OF TOBACCO. 125 

contention — "leave it off before it be meddled 
with." 

According to the best estimate that can be made, 
tobacco to the amount of $16,000,000 is consumed 
in the United States annually. Of this sum 
$9,000,000 are supposed to be for Spanish cigars ; 
$6,500,000 for smoking American tobacco and for 
chewing it, and $500,000 for snuff. Add to this 
sum, the value of the time lost, and the pauper 
tax which it occasions, and it would amount at 
least to $25,000,000 annually. What a sum spent 
for that which is not only useless, but pernicious. 
How small is the sum in comparison, which is 
devoted annually to our Bible, Tract, and Mis- 
sionary Societies. If the amount consumed in 
the use of this worse than useless article, were ap- 
propriated to the cause of education, or to any 
other useful object, what might it not accomplish ? 

Any individual can amuse himself by calculating 
the expense of tobacco for an individual or family, 
for thirty or forty years. Let these small sums be 
carefully preserved, and but few aged people would 



126 EXPENSIVENESS 

be found suffering from want. Yet this habit pre- 
vails extensively among the poor. There are 
many who subsist upon the bounty of others, who 
nevertheless consume/ a daily supply of tobacco. 
A considerable portion of the scanty pittance they 
can command is thus thrown away. This ought 
to receive the attention of benevolent societies, 
and individuals, and no person should be aided by 
public or private charity who will not abandon 
this pernicious habit. " A pious clergymen," says 
Dr. Clarke, " lately told me that he had a number 
of very poor persons in his parish immoderately 
attached to the use of tobacco. He plainly saw 
that a large portion of their daily earnings was 
destroyed in this way. He warned them in pri- 
vate, and preached in public against it, but few of 
them had resolution enough to lay it aside. The 
expense of one very poor family in snuff and to- 
bacco he calculated, and found it to amount to 
nearly one third part of their yearly earnings." 
In estimating its expense, we must not confine 
ourselves to the bare amount expended to procure 
it, but we must take into the account the cost of 
the necessary utensils for using it, and the time 



OP TOBACCO. 127 

spent in consuming it, which in value will be 
found to exceed by far the article itself. 

The following singular calculation was made 
by Lord Stanhope : — " Every professed inveterate 
snuff taker, at a moderate computation, takes one 
pinch in ten minutes. Every pinch with the 
agreeable ceremony of wiping and blowing the 
2iose, and other incidental circumstances, consumes 
a minute and a half. One minute and a half out 
of every ten, allowing sixteen hours to a snuff- 
taking day, amounts to two hours and twenty-four 
minutes out of every natural day, or one day out 
of ten. One day out of every ten amounts to 
thirty-six days and a half in a year. Hence if we 
suppose the practice persisted in forty years, two en- 
tire years of the snuff taker's life will be dedicated 
to tickling his nose, and two more to blowing it. 
The expense of snuff, and snuff-boxes, and hand- 
kerchiefs, will be the subject of a second essay," 
he says, " in which it will appear that this luxury 
encroaches as much on the income of the snuff 
taker as it does on his time ; and that by a proper 
application of the time and money thus lost to the 



128 EXPENSIVENESS 

public, a fund might be constituted for the pay- 
ment of the national debt." 

If so much time is lost to the snuffer, what shall 
be said of the habitual smoker ? His hour passes 
away in a kind of reverie, ere he is aware. There 
are many who consume six hours every day in fu- 
migating their pipe or cigar. This will be disputed 
by the guilty persons themselves, because time 
passes so insensibly under the influence of smoke. 
If they wish then to be convinced of the truth, let 
them ask some friend to note the hours they pass 
in smoking, when they feel themselves under no 
restraint. When any habitual smoker quits his 
pipe or cigar, one considerable source of uneasiness 
is, that he has so much spare time. The days 
seem longer. They were once consumed in smo- 
king. Let any habitual smoker, who is a man of 
business, throw away his pipe or cigar, and em- 
ploy the time, which he has been accustomed to 
waste, diligently in business, and he may literally 
add hundreds, perhaps thousands, to his yearly in- 
come. 



OF TOBACCO. 129 

This work of filthiness and ruin — this waste of 
health, of property, of time, and of happiness, is 
looked upon by thousands with a tearless eye, and 
without lifting a finger to stay its progress. Every 
effort to check the onward, desolating, course of 
the practice, is laughed to scorn. Some there are, 
however, who dare to speak out fearlessly, — 
even British statesmen. " In a debate in the 
British House of Commons, Hunt told the minis- 
ters : — Their change of resolution respecting the 
duty on tobacco — that most filthy, disgusting, 
abominable weed — he had not the least doubt 
would be very generally approved of. Who would 
pretend to say that this odious plant was held in 
England a necessary of life ? or who take it upon 
him to say that the execrable, beastly habit of 
chewing tobacco was a rational custom, or a whole- 
some comfort? Besides, no one can now-a-days 
hope to walk in the public thoroughfares without 
having: to endure continual whiffs of noisome 
effluvia from half-burnt cigars, smoked by ambula- 
tory, whiskered dandies — he would not call them 
gentlemen — who puffed their smoke, and spat their 
saliva, in the most offensive manner imaginable, 



130 EXPENSIVENESS 

on every side around them, in both streetb and 
stage-coaches at noon-day." 

Who that attentively considers this subject in its 
various relations, will yet continue the evil habit ? 
Who ? Who that cares for his body or mind ? — 
the cleanliness of his person or the vigor of his in- 
tellect ? Who that cares for his family — their pu- 
rity and necessities ? Who that considers himself 
a steward, and would make such a disposition of 
his Lord's money as to be approved of him at last? 
Who that considers the relation of time to eterni- 
ty ; and would so number his days as to apply his 
heart unto wisdom ? Who ? Who will continue 
a practice at once highly injurious to body and 
mind, to morals and property and cleanliness, and 
so utterly repugnant to " whatsoever things are 
lovely and of good report ?" 

We are fast treading in the steps of the Ger- 
mans ; and the following vivid description of 
the evils and misery resulting from the filthy prac- 
tice of smoking is measurably realized in some 
1 ^tions of our country already. 



OF TOBACCO. 131 

u This plague, like the Egyptian plague of frogs, 
is felt every where and in every thing. It poisons 
the streets, the clubs, and the coffee houses ; — fur- 
niture, clothes, equipage, persons are redolent of 
the abomination. It makes even the dulness of 
the newspapers doubly narcotic : every eatable and 
drinkable, all that can be seen, heard, felt, or un- 
derstood, is saturated with tobacco ; — the very air 
we breathe is but a conveyance for this poison into 
the lungs ; and every man, woman, and child, 
rapidly acquires the complexion of a boiled chicken. 
From the hour of their waking, if nine tenths of 
their population can be said to awake at all, to the 
hour of their lying down, the pipe is never out of 
their mouths. One mighty fumigation reigns, 
and human nature is smoked dry by tens of thou- 
sands of square miles. The German physiologists 
compute, that of twenty deaths between eighteen 
and thirty-five years, ten originate in the waste of 
the constitution by smoking." Look at that ! 
Ten out of twenty deaths caused by smoking ! 
The number seems incredible. But the physicians 
of Germany who have examined the subject ought 

to be informed. It is the opinion of some of the 

12 



132 EXPENSIVENESS 

best physicians in our country, that more than 
twenty thousand die annually in the United States 
by reason of the use of tobacco ! ! O the truth 
in relation to this subject is not known. The 
world is asleep on this subject. The church is 
asleep. The friends of temperance are asleep. 
The enemy is laughing to scorn our feeble at- 
tempts to destroy intemperance, while we leave 
untouched one of its principal sources. O that 
men were wise, that they would consider this. 
Many who know its evil — friends of temperance — 
dare not touch it. They are afraid of the dislike 
and contumely of its lovers. The evil they re- 
gard as incurable. They know the love of it is 
stronger than death, and they would as soon dare 
disturb the lion in his lair. But disturbed he must 
be. The note of warning must be sounded. 
The cry, loud and long, must be utterred, or the 
waves of intemperance will roll over the land, and 
the earth will continue to open and swallow up its 
victims. Something must be done. This sleep 
of death must be broken. Help ! Men of Israel, 
help ! With united voice proclaim the danger 
and shake your garments from blood. The smoke 



OP TOBACCO. 133 

of the land is going up as the smoke of a furnace, 
and if nothing is done to arrest it, it will issue in a 
tremendous earthquake, that will shake and over- 
throw our altars and our liberties, and destroy our 
lives. Say not I exaggerate : " Behold how great 
a matter a litttle fire kindleth," especially when 
that fire sends forth a smoke intoxicating, bewitch- 
ing, spell-binding. Tobacco is an enemy that sel- 
dom walks alone. He is in concert with the 
powers of darkness, and the more to be dreaded 
because he has. gained the confidence of the church, 
and walks in arm with the ministers of the sanc- 
tuary. No enemy has done the devil more ser- 
vice — none on whom he depends more. He works 
in secret when he cannot openly, — at all times, in 
all places, among all classes. He throws his arm 
around the neck of his victim, presses him to his 
bosom, and by a means peculiarly his own, severs 
the silken cord that binds man to life. He lays 
him cold in death. He mingles with the bereaved, 
sheds tears, condoles their loss, and keeps at his 
work of misery and death. 

Friends, Christians. Countrymen ! Will you 



134 EXPENSIVENESS 

harbor such an enemy? Will you countenance 
him and lend him your influence ? 

" O," says one, " I have used tobacco several 
years, and cannot perceive that it hurts me. I 
think it does me good." So says the man of al- 
cohol. No moderate drinker ever dreams he is 
injured by it, nor does he conceive the least danger 
until, when, awaking, he finds himself in the 
gutter. Tobacco did injure you when you first 
began its use ; and you had to whip and beat na- 
ture into it. Contrary to all her likings, you have 
forced upon her an unnatural appetite. And think 
you there is no harm in this ? Will not oppressed, 
enslaved, and violated nature, one day show that 
you have dishonored and wronged her ? You 
may not give heed to her wrongs till your flesh 
and your body are consumed, and in an agony 
you exclaim, " How have I hated instruction, and 
my heart despised reproof." Men never think that 
tobacco injures them, because the cancers, and 
boils, and convulsions, and headaches, and colics, 
and coughs, and consumptions which it begets, 
are always laid to other causes. (See note E.) 



OF TOBACCO. 135 

But tobacco does injure you. It is weaving your 
winding sheet — it is digging your grave. But 
though it is fitting' the grave for you, it is not 
fitting you for the grave. Will you then take 
warning ? If you will not, my soul shall weep 
in secret places for you. 

Says another, " I only take a little now and then 
with friends, as a mere matter of courtesy." And 
it is just this kind of courtesy that has made many 
a man a drunkard. Play not with vipers as a 
matter of courtesy. — No, I do not use too strong 
language. Could I show you the fangs and sting 
of tobacco, you would not say I did. But you can- 
not see them. Your eyes will be holden until the 
charm that binds you to it is broken. Let any 
man quit the use of tobacco, and in a few weeks 
he will gain from ten to twenty pounds of flesh ; and 
is a force that operates thus powerfully upon nature 
doing her no injury ? I beseech you then, touch 
not, taste not, handle not. When invited to use 
it, say as Omiah did, a native of Otaheite, when 
a certain lord handed him his gold snuff-box, and 

invited him to take a pinch, " Thank you," said he, 

12* 



136 EXPENSIVENESS 

"my lord, my nose is not hungry." Nature is 
never hungry for tobacco. 

Says another, " I object to saying much about 
abstaining from tobacco, because it may injure the 
cause of temperance. Men will not leave off rum 
and tobacco too." Well, then, it is to be feared that 
they will leave off neither permanently. Tobacco 
so drains and exhausts nature that she pleads for 
ardent spirits to revive and restore her. Under the 
exceeding exhaustion produced by tobacco, it is to 
be feared that something stimulating may be takeri 
as a medicine, and thus an old appetite be revived. 
I tremble for W ashing tonians who use tobacco. 
Every friend of temperance who will take the pains 
carefully to investigate this subject, will, for the 
sake of temperance, put his tobacco among the 
things that are not, and proclaim an exterminating 
war against it, nailing his colors to the mast. Talk 
about the final triumph of temperance while men 
continue the use of tobacco ! why it is as simple 
as it would be to talk about the final triumph of 
temperance among the Chinese while they contin- 
ue the use of their opium. " Many of the warm- 



OP TOBACCO. 137 

est friends of temperance/ 1 it is said, " use tobacco, 
and very freely too." So, likewise, many of the 
loudest and warmest friends of temperance formerly 
used their wine daily. But what now would be 
thought of the professed friend of temperance who 
should daily sip his wine 1 As killing a friend of 
temperance will the smoker or chewer be thought, 
when the same flood of light is poured upon tobacco, 
that is now poured upon the wine cask. 

But, says another, " Tobacco does not make a 
man whip his wife, nor abuse his children, nor 
waste his property." Nor will arsenic make a man 
whip his wife : shall we therefore use arsenic ? 
Like Cleopatra, put an asp in your bosom : it will 
lay you into a gentle sleep, and will not make you 
ibuse your family ; will you therefore invite the 
iting of an asp ? As to its making a man waste 
liis property, we have shown, that if the money 
which a tobacco user expends in the course of forty 
years were to be put to compound interest, it would 
be quite a fortune. Again, tobacco, after being 
used a great number of years, and rasping the 
nerves, makes a man exceedingly fretful and irri- 
table, and it would not be strange if, like rum, or 



138 EXPENSIVENESS 

together with rum, it should make a man whip his 
wife. Then, again, we have no doubt, if some 
good-natured wives should speak out, and tell the 
truth, they would say that their husbands have 
whipped them a good many times by the filthiness, 
foetid smell, and uncleanliness of tobacco. 

Says another, " I acknowledge the truth of all 
you say ; I believe it all, but I cannot throw away 
my tobacco." What ? Have you a right hand 
that causes you to offend, and will you say, I can- 
not cut it off 7 What? can you not leave off the 
use of tobacco ? I acknowledge its power. But 
have you no power ? Are you such a slave ? 
Why I should rather be a dog and bay the moon, 
than such a man. But you have power. You 
can leave it off. Be purposed that you will do it, 
in the strength of the Lord, and it will be done. 
It will indeed cost you something. The unnatural 
appetite which you have created, may hanker and 
distress you. But recollect that self-denial is one 
of the first duties of religion — one of the best evi- 
dences of decision of character — and one of the 
finest specimens of heroism. Banish your tobacco, 



OF TOBACCO. 139 

and quit yourself like a man. Say not. " I can't.'* 
What can you do ? (See note E.) 

We close with reluctance. We know the evil 
effects of tobacco. We see your danger. Would 
that from that noble head, that palace built for 
reason and kindred graces, tobacco, usurping tobac- 
co, were deposed and exiled forever. For the sake 
of your property— of your time— of your voice — - 
of your memory— of your judgment — of your 
friends— of your health— and above all, for the sake 
of your soul, banish tobacco from your lips and 
face ? as far as the east is from the west. 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 



NOTE A. 

Death from Tobacco. — We learn from the 
Dedham Democrat, that a little boy of six years 
old, son of Mr. Lewis Cobbet, of West Dedham, 
went to the store of Mr. Jason Ellis, Jr., in that 
place, and asked the clerk, a boy by the name of 
Hank, for some kind of confectionary — that he 
was told they had no sugar-plums, but he could 
have some tobacco. The child replied that tobacco 
would make him sick. The clerk argued that it 
would not, and took a cracker, and put on some 
butter and molasses and tobacco, and succeeded in 
some way in getting it down the child. The little 
fellow was taken with vomiting soon after, and 
continued to do so for several days, and at length 
went into fits, and finally died on Thursday, the 
6th inst. Mr. E. promptly discharged the clerk. 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 141 

as soon as it was known that he had committed 
the infamous transaction. Whether any farther 
notice will be taken of it, we know not, but cer- 
tainly if there is any punishment that can reach 
him, he should not be permitted to escape " un- 
whipt of justice." — New York Express. 

It is not probable that the clerk imagined it 
would injure the child. From his childhood he 
had seen it sold and used as a luxury, and perhaps 
had never heard it intimated that it was a poison ? 
which would destroy life. 



NOTE B. 

Letter from Rev. William A. Hallock. 

Rev. Mr. Lane, 

I state for your encouragement, a fact in the life 
of my father, the Rev. Moses Hallock, of Plain- 
field, Ms. During the first thirty years of his 
ministry, he smoked and chewed daily, but mode- 
rately. One morning, when about the age of 
sixty, he found the lads he was fitting for college, 



142 SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 

each with a long pipe, pleasing themselves with 
the curling smoke ; he believed they were forming 
an injurious habit, and that duty to them and their 
parents required him to arrest it ; but how could 
he do it while he smoked himself! He said to 
them, " Now, all quit smoking, and I will." It was 
done, and done effectually, A few months after 
this, on returning home, I found he had quit chew- 
ing also. I asked him if it was not more self-de- 
nial than was necessary, at his years, and remarked 
that the aged often seemed to enjoy the moderate 
use of tobacco. " I will have no such habit that 
I cannot master," was his reply. I think the 
Temperance principle of total abstinence had nat- 
urally led his mind to this state ; and to the age 
of almost fourscore to which he was spared, he 
touched neither tobacco, nor intoxicating drink. 
It was parental influence, early exerted, that, un- 
der God, guarded me from all these habits. I pity 
the slave of any one of them, and beg you to 
call on parents to guard their children against 
these evil habits. 

Your Brother in Christ, 

William A. Hallock. 
New York, July 8, 1845. 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 143 

NOTE C. 

The following letter was received in answer to 
an enquiry concerning a person who was reported 
to have died of delirium tremens, occasioned by the 
use of tobacco. The writer is a very respectable 
clergyman of Connecticut. 

£ , July 10, 1845. 

Rev. and dear Sir, 

In reply to yours of the 7th inst, I will say to 
you that the person of whom I spoke as having 
died with delirium tremens from the use of tobac- 
co, was B C , Esq., of T bt. A lawyer 

by profession, deliberate, sober, phlegmatic. He 
was for several years judge of the County Court in 

W Co., Vt, w^hich is no mean office in that 

part of the country. I was well acquainted with 

Judge C for several years, as I resided in the 

same county ; and he was very active and efficient 
in all benevolent enterprises, and one of the main 

pillars in the Congregational church at T . I 

was not acquainted with his particular habits, or 

private character. He lived two or three years 

13 



144 SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 

after I came to Ct. I received the particulars of his 

death by Rev. Mr. H , then pastor of that 

church. He made no use of alcoholic drink — was 
a distinguished friend of the Temperance Refor- 
mation. He had some trials in the misconduct of 
an adopted son whom he loved. I think he had 
no children of his own. I believe he made no use 
of tobacco, except for smoking, and for two or three 
years that was incessant. He would smoke till he 
came to the meeting'-house steps, and then light 
his pipe on the steps after service. I was told that 
for the last few months he shut himself in his 
room, and mourned and smoked without cessation. 

Very affectionately yours, 

A. C. W. 



NOTE D. 

Ballston Centre^ August 26, 1845, 
My dear Sir, 

I am rejoiced to learn from your letter, this 

day received, that you are about issuing a work 

exposing the deleterious effects of the use of tobacco 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 145 

upon the human constitution, and the pecuniary 
loss in various ways it occasions the people of this 
country. 

I have had my fears for the safety of the Tem- 
perance cause through the insidious influence of 
tobacco. There can be no doubt that this vile weed 
originates many diseases, causes premature death, 
and much intemperance. It is my conviction that 
while the use of tobacco continues intemperance 
will continue to curse the world ; the use of tobacco 
leads to the use of intoxicating drinks. They are 
all of one family. 

I have been not a little discouraged to see many 
leaders in the temperance host in the constant use 
of tobacco. It has appeared to me very inconsis- 
tent. The opposers of the temperance cause note 
this inconsistency. An argument in favor of total 
abstinence, coming from a man under the influ- 
ence of tobacco, cannot have much influence, nor 
should it have. 

I am in hopes that the publication you contem- 



146 SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 

plate will call attention to this important question. 
There can be no doubt that the use of tobacco is 
greatly on the increase. It is time that its delete- 
rious qualities should be fully developed, and the 
question agitated throughout the land. When the 
whole truth shall be developed in regard to the poi- 
sonous qualities of this plant, the use of it must ter- 
minate with Christian people. 

I am, dear Sir, 

Yours truly, 
Edward C. Delavan. 



Letter from Dr. Edwards to the Editor of the 
Temperance Journal. 

Sir — In your Journal you say, "It would be a 
profitable business to go through the United States 
and see if the men that now consume intoxicating 
drinks are not almost entirely the men that smoke ; 
and, if the one vice is not so connected with the 
other, that, to suppress drinking in the rising gen- 
eration, it is absolutely necessary to make a bold 
and general effort to suppress smoking. We do 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 147 

not believe that while our young men and boys are 
trained in such extravagant habits of smoking, we 
can effectually fasten upon the nation the temper- 
ance reformation. And if this be so, will not tem- 
perance men, for the good of the cause, themselves 
renounce entirely the filthy weed?" You have 
here justly, I have no doubt, expressed apprehen- 
sions that the use of tobacco promotes the use of 
intoxicating liquors, and thus obstructs the temper- 
ance reformation. It also promotes many other 
physical and moral evils. The gratification which 
it affords, I have no doubt, is the gratification of 
one of those fleshly lusts which war against the 
soul, and from which it is a duty to abstain. And 
could such tracts as M'Allister, Mussey, and Fowler, 
on tobacco, be generally circulated and read, they 
would, with the Divine blessing, save many of our 
youth from an untimely grave. Christians, and 
especially Ministers of the Gospel who use this 
filthy and poisonous weed, are, I fear, exerting an 
influence, the consequences of which will be deeply 
regretted for ever. 



What right has one man, for his own gratifica- 

13* 



148 SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 

tion, to poison the atmosphere which other men 
must breathe, and set an example, which, if fol- 
lowed by children and youth, will tend to injure 
and destroy them ? Is it not plain, that all the 
animal gratifications which men can safely enjoy, 
or which they have a right to seek, can be found 
in the proper gratification of the natural appetites 
and passions which God has given them ; and that 
the formation of a new, artificial, unnatural appetite 
for tobacco, alcohol, or other poisons, for the sake 
of increased animal gratification, is a violation of 
a moral principle, and that the consequences must 
prove, " the way of transgressors to be hard V 9 
Perhaps you may find it convenient, from time to 
time, to publish in your very useful paper some of 
the principles and facts contained in the above- 
mentioned pamphlets, and thus promote the cause 
of abstinence from the ordinary use of all poisons 
as well as that of Alcohol. 

Truly yours, <fcc., 

Justin Edwards. 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 149 



NOTE E. 

The following letters are from distinguished mem- 
bers of the medical profession in the city of Troy. 
Their character and standing are such as speak 
their own praise. 

Rev. Mr. Lane, 

Sir, — In accordance with your request that 
I would state some of the results of my observation 
of the effects of the habitual use of tobacco, I 
herewith present you a few remarks, together with 
several cases, that are yet in my memory. My 
opinion of the nature and uses of this drug, which 
was first formed by professional reading, and after- 
wards confirmed by seeing, is this. It is a power- 
ful medicine, possessed of peculiar properties, adapted 
to the cure of a certain class of diseases, and as such 
not suitable to be used in any form by those who 
are in health. The common experience of man- 
kind teaches that strong medicines cannot be used 
habitually on a healthy system without producing 
disease, or shortening life. That it is 3 in many 



150 SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. « 

cases, a valuable medicine, is, therefore, an argu- 
ment against, and not in favor of, its habitual use. 
I believe it to be in its nature, what is termed a 
sedative, that is, a substance which lessens vital 
action directly, and tends to extinguish life. This 
appears from its promptly reducing the normal ac- 
tion of the digestive organs, as well as by its les- 
sening the inflammatory action of any particular 
part to which it is applied, and by its producing 
death without the intervention of inflammation, 
when taken in sufficient quantity. 

In ascribing the fatal effects in the following 
cases to tobacco as the cause, I would be understood 
as inferring this as the most obvious or probable 
cause, or that other sufficient causes seemed to be 
wanting. This premised, I proceed to say that I 
have witnessed several cases of fatal disease induced 
by the use of tobacco. 

1st. By chewing. Its fatal effects in produ- 
cing epilepsy by this mode are well known to 
some living witnesses to the following two instan- 
ces which came to my knowledge. 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 151 

A son of Mr. , of Troy, had acquired the 

habit of chewing this drug long before he arrived 
at the age of 20. He became subject to frequent 
attacks of epilepsy. It was soon discovered by his 
friends that the epileptic seizures never occurred 
except when using tobacco. The experiment was 
tried of depriving him of his beloved cud. This 
could not be done in any other way than by con- 
fining him to one room, which was done, I think, 
in one instance, three months. During his con- 
finement, and consequent abstinence, he had no 
epileptic attacks. As soon as he was permitted to 
go out, he would procure his favorite drug from 
some friendly hand, and be very soon brought 
home in one of his fits. These would occur daily 
so long as he had access to the poisonous article, 
until, at length, he became idiotic and died. The 
particulars of this case I had from my partner, who 
often attended the young man, and who, as well as 
many of the neighbors that often performed the 
friendly office of conducting him home senseless, 
never doubted the agency of tobacco in inducing 
those attacks. 



152 SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 

Another case, in this city, of later date, came 

under my own care. A son of Mr. , of the 

age of 15, was taken home from a public school 
on account of having experienced several attacks 
of epilepsy, and placed under my professional care. 
After a few attacks, it was discovered, during one 
of the seizures, that he had tobacco in his mouth. 
Directions were given for regulating his diet, and 
he was advised to omit the use of tobacco, which 
he promised to do. Whilst he abstained from the 
use of this, he was free from any epileptic attack. 
The attacks, however, frequently returned,. and on 
every occasion of the kind, notwithstanding his own 
efforts at reformation, tobaoco was found either in 
his mouth or pocket. The administration of med- 
icines was finally given up as unavailing, and after 
dragging out ten years of a life useless to his friends, 
and perhaps to himself, he died. If it w^ere lawful 
to make experiments on human beings to demon- 
strate the effects of a particular noxious agent in 
inducing disease or death, I know of no set of ex- 
periments which could be more satisfactory in pro- 
ducing undeniable results than those voluntarily 
carried out by this young man. 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 153 

2nd. By snuffing. A lady of this city, who 
was in the habit, although otherwise neat, and a 
good housekeeper, of taking snuff to an extent that 
rendered her person, her room, and furniture offen- 
sive, was seized with an unpleasant sensation on 
the skin of the right temple, extending by degrees 
to a part of the forehead. This was at first slight, 
and accompanied with tingling sensations, or par- 
tial numbness. She had taken medical advice and 
used various remedies before applying to me. Be- 
ing at first sanguine of success, I applied a great 
variety of counter-irritants, with remedies for the 
general health, and for improving the condition of 
the digestive organs, without perceiving even a 
temporary amelioration of her symptoms. The 
sense of numbness slowly pervaded her right side, 
and she became affected with turns of faintness, 
sometimes even in the open air, so as to lose the 
power of voluntary motion, but not her conscious- 
ness. The numbness at last extended to the low- 
er extremity of the right side, and she died paral- 
ytic, after lying in a helpless state for many months. 
Having been acquainted with the subject of the 
above case for many years, and knowing her other- 



154 SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 

wise good and correct habits, and her excellent 
constitution, I could impute her fatal disease to no 
other cause than her excessive use of snuff. 

A middle-aged gentleman of this city, very in- 
dustrious, of regular habits, and temperate withal, 
possessed of an excellent moral and religious char- 
acter, had been, for a few years, addicted to the 
excessive use of snuff. He was suddenly seized 
with hemiplegia or palsy of one side. He partially 
recovered, but in a year or two afterwards died 
with a second attack of the same disease. The 
only cause to which his disease could be reasonably 
imputed seemed to be his use of this deleterious 
narcotic. 

3rd. By smoking. This mode of using the sub- 
stance in question has sometimes produced apo- 
plexy. It is true, there are not many recorded 
facts to prove this, nor is it to be expected that di- 
rect experiments can be instituted to demonstrate 
clearly this sudden, overpowering, and irreparable 
effect on the nervous system, except such as indi- 
viduals may madly perpetrate on themselves. On 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 155 

this point, the well known facts in relation to the 
two Silesian brothers, mentioned by the celebrated 
Tissot, are not irrelevant. They were smoking for 
a wager, and both fell down and died in an apo- 
plectic fit, the one in smoking his 17th, and the 
other his ISth pipe. But as such experiments 
must and ought to be rare, it may be proper to in- 
stitute the inquiry, whether a more moderate use 
of the pipe has a tendency to produce the above- 
named disease. It is well known that two oppo- 
site conditions of the brain obtain in different cases 
of apoplexy ; the one attended with a high state 
of arterial action, and great fulness of the vessels 
of the brain, and denominated the sthenic or en- 
tonic form ; the other occurring in a low state of 
action, with an actual deficiency of blood and of 
nervous power, and hence called the asthenic or 
atonic form. If my view of the nature of tobacco, 
given above, is correct, we should expect it to pro- 
duce the latter form. If it can be shown that the 
symptoms arising from the smoking of tobaccc 
are similar to, or identical with the premonitory 
and progressive symptoms of that form of apoplec- 
tic seizure, I think the tendency is then fairly 

14 



156 SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 

proved. But the symptoms of this form of apo- 
plexy as given by a modern standard writer* are 
the following : " alarming vertigo ; a feeling of 
faintness ; sickness at stomach and vomiting ; dis- 
turbance of the senses, especially of sight ; loss 
of memory ; partial loss of sense, consciousness ; 
and voluntary motion ; weak, irregular, and some- 
times quick pulse, with more or less of sleepiness." 
Now, the question of the similarity of these symp- 
toms to those produced by tobacco smoking, may 
be submitted to the memory and experience of 
those who have some time or other been made sick 
by smoking tobacco. On those who have never 
had this experience, my argument is lost, unless 
they will try the experiment. Further, as apoplexy 
has its related and associated forms of nervous dis- 
ease which fall short of real apoplexy, and, as the 
degrees of excess in the use of tobacco may be less 
or more in different individuals and different cases, 
we should naturally expect to find lower or higher 
degrees of nervous disease induced by its use in 
different persons. Now, as there are some species 
of apoplexy accompanied with palsy or terminating 
**6ee Copland's Med. Diet. 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 157 

in it, we should expect to find cases where smo- 
king as well as snuffing has preceded a paralytic 
attack. Accordingly, we do find that such cases are 
more numerous than those of apoplexy. The in- 
fluence of snuffing in aggravating the symptoms 
of nervous disease which have been of increased 
frequency within the last ten or twelve years, es- 
pecially among females, will be readily admitted by 
medical men, as I have often proposed the omission 
of the habit with very obvious and successful re- 
sults. 

If it be asked whether these views are sustained 
by the authority of medical writers, I would make 
one or two references. The use of snuff and of 
tobacco in any of its forms is named by Dr. Cop- 
land, an eminent modern systematic writer, as an 
exciting cause of apoplexy. By the same writer it 
is numbered among the predisposing causes of the 
same disease. The celebrated Dr. Cheyne, in giv- 
ing an analysis of 50 perfect cases of apoplexy, 
gives the following as causes : 1st. Drunkenness. 
2nd. The form of the body. 3rd. The tempera- 
ment. 4th. Gluttony. 5th. Indolence. 6th. Men- 



158 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 



tal anxiety. 7th. Fits of passion. 8th. External 
heat. 9th. The use of tobacco. 

IV. By swallowing it. This is done to a 
certain degree in ordinary chewing, as well as in 
snuffing and smoking, but there are cases of chew- 
ing in which the saliva is habitually swallowed. A 
gentleman of my acquaintance informed me some 
years since that he was well acquainted in New 
York with a young man belonging to a very re- 
spectable family in Liverpool, employed as a com- 
mercial agentj who during a two years' residence in 
New York, so far copied the manners of his new 
associates as to acquire the habit of chewing to- 
bacco. On his return to his home, unwilling to 
give up his Yankee habit, and equally unwilling 
to suffer the disgrace attached to the habit among 
his respectable acquaintances, he adopted the plan 
of swallowing his saliva whilst chewing, in order 
to avoid discovery. His health soon began to fail, 
and he was placed under the care of a physician, 
who could discover no disease upon him ^except a 
generally debilitated state of body, and whose rem- 
edies were of no use in restoring him to health. 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 159 

When reduced to a very low condition, he informed 
his physician that he had been in the habit of 
chewing tobacco and swallowing the saliva, but his 
information was communicated too late, and he 
shortly after died. 

That the use of tobacco in its various modes is 
often instrumental in producing and aggravating 
morbid growths, both malignant and non-malig- 
nant, has been held by some, and I think not with- 
out reason. 

Mr. -— , of this city, aged 70, a strictly tem- 
perate man, who had been for many years in the 
habit of smoking his pipe, and sometimes a rather 
short one, was affected with a tumor of a scir- 
rhous character on his under lip in the exact place 
where he was accustomed to hold his pipe. Ex- 
cision of the tumor was performed, and the wound 
healed over smoothly. In the course of a few 
months, however, the malignant affection reap- 
peared lower on his face, affecting various portions 
of the chin and parts below the jaw. The tumors 

soon took on the form of cancer, the ulcers rapidly 

14* 



160 SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 

spreading and destroying the coats of the blood- 
vessels, until repeated hemorrhages entirely ex- 
hausted him. A clergyman of Connecticut who 
had regularly performed his pastoral duties for 
forty years, and who had indulged in the habit of 
smoking tobacco during his professional life, was af- 
fected during the last few years of his life with an 
indurated tumor of slow but constant growth, ex- 
tending from under the left ear to the chin, and a 
little distance around on the other side, compressing 
the windpipe and filling up the space vertically 
from the jaw to the collar bone. This tumor, al- 
though not painful, occasioned great difficulty in 
swallowing liquids, so that he was often in danger 
of suffocation during his meals. It was at length 
the probable cause of his death, for he died under 
an attack of croup, which but for that might per- 
haps have been cured. 

I witnessed another fatal case of tumor, a few 
years since, in an eminent clergyman, who had in- 
dulged in the habit of smoking, many years, to an 
extravagant degree. The tumor, which occu- 
pied part of the cavity of the abdomen, attained, 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 161 

in less than three years, an enormous size, involv- 
ing one of the kidneys, and a portion of the liver, 
and filling one side of the abdomen, and preventing 
him, for many months before death, from lying in 
a horizontal posture. 

A gentleman with whom I had been acquainted 
for many years, who had been accustomed to 
chewing tobacco, became dyspeptic about 15 years 
before his death, and left off, for a time, the perni- 
cious habit. In about six weeks from that period, 
he gained fourteen pounds of flesh, a result similar 
to what I have often witnessed, and heard of, in 
others. He resumed the practice, however, in less 
than a year, a sequence which is also very com- 
mon. About six or eight years afterwards, he ex- 
hibited commencing symptoms of diseased liver. 
During the last year of his life his complexion 
grew sallow, he became weak and nervous, had 
loss of appetite, a quick pulse, difficulty of breath- 
ing, enlargement of the liver, which no remedies 
seemed to control. He died suddenly, and on ex- 
amination was found to have a scirrhous, tubercu- 
lated liver, pancreas and omentum, and a scir- 



162 SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 

rhous stomach. The scirrhous portion of the 
stomach, extended from near the lower orifice, over 
a surface from 2 to 3 inches in width, entirely 
around the stomach, the inner surface of which 
was already in an ulcerated or cancerous state. 
That the diseased condition above described bore 
the relation to tobacco of an effect to a cause, may 
not admit of positive certainty, inasmuch as the 
predisposing and efficient causes of cancerous dis- 
ease cannot in most cases be known, vet it is diffi- 
cult to avoid the belief in this case that tobacco had 
an important agency either in inducing or aggra- 
vating the disease. 

It may be proper in this connection, to inquire, 
by a careful comparison of the symptoms of can- 
cerous or malignant disease on the one hand, with 
the artificial symptoms produced by the regular and 
long-continued use of tobacco on the other, wheth- 
er there may not be a tendency in the continued 
use of tobacco to produce malignant disease. 

Pathologists tell us " that the development of 
malignant disease depends on a perversion of the 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 163 

nutritive process — that the lymph which exudes 
through the capillary vessels in the ordinary course 
of nutrition or some accidental inflammation, ap- 
pears to have its vitality perverted — so that instead 
of forming in itself the normal cells out of which 
the proper tissues of the body are developed, it 
forms the irregular abnormal cells constituting a 
malignant tissue. One of the causes of this per- 
version of function is a peculiar cachexy, or mor- 
bid state of constitution which is sometimes con- 
genital, and sometimes appears to be caused by de- 
pression of mind and other circumstances that im- 
pair the powers of digestion and nutrition. An- 
other cause is constant local irritation." Now let us 
ask the veteran tobacco user if he has ever experi- 
enced a perversion of function by the lessening of 
the vital powers, a lowering of the appetite and 
wasting of the flesh, an occasional depression of 
spirits and weakening of the mental powers, espe- 
cially after a tobacco debauch ? But as the influ- 
ence of very obvious causes is not always readily 
perceived by the person most affected by them, or 
if perceived, not readily acknowledged, let us see 
if the connection between the above symptoms and 



164 SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 

the alleged cause cannot be more satisfactorily 
made out by the indirect or reversed mode of com- 
parison. If, then, it can be shown that when a 
person in the daily use of tobacco is laboring un- 
der the above symptoms, they mostly disappear 
soon after omitting the use of tobacco, the cause 
of such symptoms is clearly made out. But nu- 
merous cases within my own knowledge have oc- 
curred in which the disuse of such practice has, in 
a very few weeks, improved the appetite, increased 
the flesh, increased the vital power and all the bod- 
ily functions, and added cheerfulness to mental 
activity. In fact, the habitual use of this drug is 
in some cases adopted professedly to remove a cor- 
pulent habit of body. — If, therefore, the identity 
of symptoms in the two cases is established, is not 
a tendency to produce the disease in question 
clearly proved ? 

Again, let us inquire how the treatment of the 
" cancerous cachexy, as it is called, when the pa- 
tient is languid, depressed, emaciated, the complex- 
ion leaden and sallow, the appetite bad and diges- 
tion imperfect," as recommended by modern medi- 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 165 

cal writers, accords with the above views. Dr. 
Druitt, an approved modern surgeon, directs " that 
before resorting to extirpation, the general health 
should be improved by a tonic course, or an altera- 
tive plan of treatment. The same course should 
be pursued, even if extirpation should be imprac- 
ticable. But we have seen above that the general 
health is more speedily improved, in the case of 
those who use tobacco, by omitting its use, than by 
any other means. This, then, in the case of one 
using the drug, would naturally form one of those 
means recommended. But if the disuse of a 
thing would aid in removing a disease, it is reason- 
able to infer that its use would have a tendency to 
aggravate, if not to produce it. 

In regard to the agency of tobacco in producing 
or increasing malignant disease, there is some rea- 
son to believe that what it may not accomplish 
when used alone, it will accomplish when used in 
conjunction with other poisons. Some observing 
medical men have entertained the opinion that the 
habitual use of tobacco with alcoholic drinks has 
often been instrumental in inducing scirrhus of 



166 SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 

the stomach. It may be recollected by many that 
this opinion was given by the attending physician 
of the celebrated Dr. Holyoke, who made a post 
mortem examination of his body. He testified be- 
fore the legislature of Massachusetts, when about 
passing the nine-gallon law, that the cause of his 
death was a scirrhous state of the stomach, a re- 
sult often witnessed in the case of those who were 
in the daily and regular or moderate use of tobacco 
and rum. 

On the whole, from the few observations I have 
made in my professional practice, of the peculiar 
effects, on the human system, of the different 
modes of using tobacco, I infer that chewing it has 
a tendency to produce epilepsy ; snuffing, to pro- 
duce palsy and various nervous affections ; smo- 
king, to produce apoplexy ; and any or all of these 
modes, single or combined, to produce malignant or 
cancerous disease. 

Respectfully yours, 

Amatus Robbins. 

Troy, August 9th, 1845. 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 167 

Troy, N. Y., August 11, 1845. 
My dear. Sir, 

My attention was very forcibly directed to the 
injurious effects of smoking tobacco many years 
since, while I was pursuing my medical studies in 
London, from the following occurrence. — I was one 
evening induced to commence smoking a cigar, 
and while so doing I became senseless, and re- 
mained so several hours before my situation was 
discovered by one of the inmates of the house. 
Assistance was obtained, and I was relieved from 
the dangerous condition I was in from the narcotic 
effects of tobacco. Since that time, I have myself 
refrained from the use of tobacco, in any of its 
forms, and have watched its effects on the human 
constitution for more than twenty years; and I 
can truly say that its use is generally attended 
with injury, — showing its effects more particularly 
on the nervous system. I have, moreover, noticed 
that tobacco chewers do not recover from sickness 
so favorably as other patients ; their vital powers are 
lessened. For although the tobacco chewer goes on 
with his usual avocations in the semi-narcotic state 

he is usually in, yet when any severe disease sets 

15 



168 SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 

in he has a two-fold difficulty to contend with, — in 
fact, I have in several instances seen the most 
prominent symptoms of delirium tremens take 
place from suddenly leaving off chewing tobacco — 
as also in the commencement of the habit. 

I can, I think, bear testimony that the use of to- 
bacco, both by smoking and chewing, is a most 

m 

fruitful source of intemperance. 

I remain, my dear sir, 

Yours very truly, 

James Thorn, Jr. 
Rev. B. I. Lane. 



NOTE F. 

We give the reader the testimony of a few indi- 
viduals respecting the deleterious influence of to- 
bacco upon themselves, and the benefits resulting 
from abandoning its use. We might extend the 
list to a great length were it not for swelling the 
volume to a size too great. These are the tes- 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 169 

timonies of men of worth and standing in commu- 
nity, and too well known to need any commenda- 
tion from our pen. 

Brooklyn^ July 15, 1845. 
Rev. Mr. Lane, 
Dear Sir, 

In accordance with your request, I herewith 
furnish some account of my experience in the use 
of tobacco, and if it can be the means of inducing 
any now in slavish bondage to the vile habit to 
break away from it, or of preventing any who may 
now be exposed, from acquiring this habit, I shall 
be most glad. Like many other youths, I com- 
menced the pernicious practice of chewing and 
smoking from a mistaken notion that somehow or 
other tobacco gave dignity and worth to the young 
man, — alas, how many are deceived by this stupid 
fallacy. It was at first pretty hard for me to learn, 
— would it had been much harder, — but by dint 
of perseverance, I was ultimately able to chew a 
quid and smoke a cigar equal to the most thor- 
oughly initiated. I continued thus to scourge my- 
self for full fifteen years. At what time it began 



170 SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 

to discover its poisonous effects upon me I cannot 
precisely state, as I suffered in many ways and for a 
long time 3 before ever suspecting the cause or causes. 
I very soon was made sensible that the use of 
the vile stuff had destroyed my appetite ; but what 
of that, — had I not acquired another, and one to 
my vain youthful mind more manly than eating 
food to satisfy nature's claims ? It is now in my 
painful remembrance, that for years I did not eat 
food with that relish which God and Nature de- 
signed for me. As a natural consequence, when 
I succeeded in destroying the healthy tone of the 
stomach, dyspepsy, with its legion train of evils, 
set in upon me. I regarded myself as unfortunate 
in the loss of my health and vigor at so early an 
age, and was ready to blame for my misfortune 
every body and every thing, sooner than myself 
and my tobacco. My nervous system was becom- 
ing every day more and more irritable, my spirits 
more and more desponding — and wretchedness 
came upon me " as an armed man." I complained 
of my lot as peculiarly hard in all this, and called 
this a minister-killing age, thought the people ex- 
acted too much pastoral labor of me, and won- 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 171 

dered that any minister should ever be found will- 
ing to assume a parochial charge in a city. My 
pulpit preparations, always difficult enough under 
the most favorable circumstances, became a bur- 
den too hard to be endured. I went into my study 
like the prisoner to his cell. It was a painful la- 
bor to collect my thoughts, and still more difficult 
to concentrate them upon a subject. Finally, a 
crisis came to me. What I had begun to suspect 
as at least half true, was forced upon me with all 
the clearness and certainty of demonstration. My 
sleep for a long time had been fitful and troubled, 
but my convictions now came, and they were full 
and settled. I confess myself greatly indebted to 
the Rev. Mr. Colver, of Boston, for what followed 
that crisis in my life. At his recommendation, I 
drew up and signed an instrument, pledging my 
honor as a man, as a Christian, and a minister, 
against pursuing a course in my case manifestly 
suicidal. This is nearly two years ago, since which 
time I have been healthier and happier by far. It 
is my determined purpose now to " stand fast in 

the liberty with which Christ has made me free, 

15* 



172 SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 

and not again to be entangled in the yoke of bon- 
dage," 

My prayer is that you, my dear brother, may be 
abundantly successful in awakening public atten- 
tion to this insidious and destructive evil. 

Please accept my ardent wishes for your health 
and happiness. 

Affectionately yours in the Gospel 

Of our common Lord, 

James L. Hodge, 
Pastor of 1st Baptist Church, Brooklyn. 



New York, July 12th, 1845. 
Dear Sir, 

In answer to your inquiry, I have to say that 
I was a tobacco chewer 27 years, swallowing the . 
saliva the most of the time. During the first 12 
or 14 months' practice in the swallowing process, I 
was almost daily troubled by the stomach rejecting 
the poison by vomiting; after some 15 or 20 min- 
utes death-like sickness, accompanied by violent 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 173 

retching. During the balance of the 27 years I 
was frequently troubled in the same manner, say 
once every 10 or 12 days. 

I have always been a hearty eater, with very lit- 
tle concern as to what was set before me, though 
my taste was, and still is, very acute, for I eat to 
live, and don't live to eat. While I was a tobacco 
chewer I was seldom hungry, yet ate heartily to 
preserve health, forcing myself when the appetite 
failed. Very often, say one-fourth of the time, the 
smell of cooked food made it necessary for me to 
take a little raw brandy, or some other stimulant, 
to bring the stomach to a right standard for the re- 
ception of food without rejecting it. 

During the first year or 18 months, I frequently 
ate a second dinner, and now and then a third, be- 
fore I could obtain a permanent lodgment of the 
food, yet I persevered, knowing it was necessary 
for me to chew, if the dentist, who advised me to 
do so, was correct, of which I had no doubt, being 
then but 17, and rather more credulous than at 
present. While using it, a day seldom passed in 



174 SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 

which I had no feeling of sickness of the stomach, 
for at least some 20 or thirty minutes. Most of the 
time I endured it till it passed off, — if at home, a 
little brandy settled the stomach, — if out, a small 
piece of calamus answered the purpose. During" 
almost the whole of the 27 years, I believed this 
frequent recurrence of nausea was common to ev- 
ery one, (as all complained from time to time of not 
feeling well,) and was at least not inclined to be- 
lieve it was occasioned by the tobacco, concluding 
that the use of it for many years must have so 
conformed me to it, that it could have no delete- 
rious effect, at least it could certainly not so serious- 
ly affect me after so many years constant use of it. 
In addition to this, I knew I felt worse when I laid 
it aside for three or four days, as I sometimes did. 
In fact, my love for it perverted my judgment ; my 
misery without it caused me to cleave to this great 
comforter of life. The nauseous, horribly offensive 
weed, by use became a most wondrous palatable 
companion, especially when in trouble, when twice 
as much as usual is used by all consumers of it. 

After using it about eight or ten years I was fre- 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 175 

quently in great agony by an affection of the heart, 
which my physician said would some day take 
me off as suddenly as a candle is snuffed. At first 
these spells returned as often as once a week, then 
every third or fourth day, and shortly, before I 
quitted the use of it, as frequently as once a day ; 
sometimes when depressed, from business or sick- 
ness in my family, I would have returns of it three 
or four times in the course of twenty-four hours, 
generally at night when the bustle of the day was 
over. For a long time I verily considered my life 
as suspended on a very brittle thread, yet did not 
surmise that the tobacco had any particular con- 
cern in the affair. When first visited with this 
muscular contraction and expansion of the heart, 
or whatever it was, I feared I was about leaving 
this world, but in time became familiar with it. 
Each return was pretty nearly like the first visit, 
there being but trifling shades of difference during 
the following 17 or 18 years. I will describe its 
first visit as nearly as possible : — 

I had just finished dinner and was on my way 
to my business, when I felt a severe pain in the 



176 SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 

heart on the left side, very similar to two or three 
stitches, as they are commonly called ; that is, a 
sharp flying pain, as though the place was pierced 
by a needle ; this was succeeded by a dead, heavy 
pain, as though a lever were affixed horizontally 
across my breast, almost pressing it in, the fulcrum 
being on the left side on the heart. This was ac- 
companied by a fluttering, as well as contracting 
and swelling of the heart, as though it first lost its 
rotundity, and became perfectly flattened and 
pulseless ; then after two or three minutes it would 
flutter and expand as though it would burst its 
bounds, and again, in a minute or two, seem to 
lose its pulsation. During these spasmodic attacks, 
which mostly continued violent about half an hour, 
I was extremely feeble, pale, and sick at the stom- 
ach ; a little clear brandy nearly always set all go- 
ing right again, but when I refrained from this 
cure it would hang on some two or three hours, 
and gradually pass away. 

Throughout my use of tobacco I was extremely 
nervous, and was frequently troubled with a flut- 
tering weakness at the pit of my stomach, which 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 177 

sometimes caused a slight tremor of the voice in 
talking, and made me feel it to be a great exertion 
to retain an erect position. — In fact, I was often re- 
minded of my position, being like an empty bag 
attempting to stand upright. 

Yet all my life I have called myself a hearty 
man, three weeks being the extent of all the sick- 
ness I have had in more than fifty years, though 
naturally thin in flesh. 

It is about ten years since I broke from the use 
of tobacco ; it was an awful struggle for the first 
10 or 12 days, with a longing after the weed for 
some months, but that has now entirely passed 
off. I uniformly have a good appetite, and am 
more fleshy than at any time during, my tobacco 
chewing. 

I was never a heavy chewer, a common paper 
of tobacco would last about ten days. After break- 
ing from it my spasmodic and other nervous affec- 
tions gradually passed away, so that I now very 
seldom feel the remains of any of them. 



178 SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 

Knowing the deleterious effect of its use, since 
I quit it, I have been enabled to induce many to 
lay it aside ; but some have gone to the grave be- 
cause they believed they could not follow my ad- 
vice. 

A proprietor of one of our daily papers, who 
seemed to himself and others to be tottering on 
the grave, and knew not the cause, after hearing 
me tell of the effect of tobacco on myself, remarked, 
" If I had attempted to describe my own feelings, I 
should have found it utterly impossible to have 
done it as accurately as you have ; and from, this 
moment I quit the use of it." Whether he adhe- 
red to his resolution is not known to me, as I never 
saw him again : he died a few months after, as 
the physician said, with an affection of the heart. 

Another friend, Mr. Thompson, who had charge 
of the establishment of the New York Mirror, till 
his last sickness, told me a few months before his 
death that he was thankful to me for my accurate 
description of his feelings, and my good advice, but 
that he had already made several fruitless attempts 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 179 

to break from the habit, and had given up the 
struggle as hopeless, knowing he must soon die a 
martyr to tobacco. A few months after, he left a 
wife and young family to struggle with the world, 
because he could not break from the pernicious 
habit. 

Another friend, a Mr. Connor, but 27 years of 
age, with whom, as well as Thompson, I frequent- 
ly conversed on the subject, and who, like Thomp- 
son, made several attempts to master the habit, 
gave it up in despair, remarking that his inward 
weakness was such, that he knew if any disorder 
took violent hold of him, it could very easily shake 
him out of the world. Some three or four months 
afterwards he died of consumption, after a few 
days' illness. I might tell of many who w T ere 
gradually led to intemperance in drink from the 
thirst and exhaustion occasioned by spitting away 
the very substance or necessary nourishment of 
their systems, but time and calling business forbid. 

Your obedient servant, 

D. Fanshaw. 
16 



180 SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 

New York, July 15th, 1845. 
Rev. Mr. Lane, 

Dear Sir, 

With pleasure I comply with your request, 
and willingly add my testimony to the list of wit- 
nesses against that miserable scamp — tobacco. 

I was induced by an older companion, at the age 
of thirteen, to learn the science of chewing tobac- 
co (as he called it), and were it not that he assured 
me that it would make of me a gentleman, I 
should have begged leave to decline after the first 
or second attempt. — But perseverance and numer- 
ous accomplished gentlemen (tobaccoly consider- 
ed) sustained and urged me on till I could chew as 
much — and with as perfect grace as my kind in- 
structor. 

You ask how it affected me ? — Well, sir, it made 
me feel mean — look mean, and very probably act 
mean — made my eyes weak — destroyed my appe- 
tite — disturbed my rest — gave me severe and al- 
most constant pains in my breast — made me low- 
spirited, and at times very dejected — in short, se~ 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 181 

riously injured me physically, morally, and intel- 
lectually. 

I have, after 8 years' steady sufferings thrown 
aside my box, and need hardly add that with it 
vanished all my ills. — I am now perfectly well — 
have never enjoyed myself better — and only hope 
that ill health will overtake me when there can be 
found in my pocket an oblong box containing" 
" Recipes for making Gentlemen." 
Wishing you the success 

Your labor of love entitles you to, 
I am, sir, respectfully yours, 

K. E. G. 



Troy, June 16, 1845. 
Dear Sir, 

Since you requested me to make a short state- 
ment of my experience with regard to the use of 
tobacco, I have had no time to digest my ideas 
upon the subject : of course they will be very crude 
and disjointed, but such as they are I throw them 
out, with the hope that they may be the means of 



J 82 SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 

arousing some of the slaves to this vile weed to see 
the dangerous habit which they are cherishing. 

I commenced the use of the weed when I was 
about 12 years old, like thousands of others, with- 
out any definite motive, except it may be seeing 
persons older than myself using it : I concluded that 
it was a very manly habit ; it could not have been 
from its pleasant effects or taste. I commenced smo- 
king for some time, and gradually got into the habit 
of chewing : it at first created great disturbance in 
the system, relaxing the nerves to the degree that 
it became very difficult to respire, and while the 
nerves were in that state proved a very easy emetic 
and cathartic. After the seasoning was over, I 
went on without much thought upon the subject 
for six or seven years, when I became convinced 
that it injured me, producing shaking of the hand, 
and doubtless injured the memory. I made many 
fruitless attempts to break the habit, until I had 
been in it about eighteen years, when one fall I re- 
solved that I would stop on the first of January. On 
the eve of that day, I sat down with a full box to 
smoke and chew the old year out and the new one 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 183 

in, with the hope of making myself sick, but did 
not succeed. The next morning I felt like a drunk- 
ard the morning after a debauch, very dry about 
the mouth, and as soon as out of bed started for 
my box, found it empty, thought of my resolve and 
put it away, dressed me and went about my busi- 
ness as usual, and used none for more than three 
years. 

The effect at first was great hankering for the 
weed, with some confusion of ideas, a want of some- 
thing to stimulate the nervous system as usual : 
this continued about three days, when I was taken 
with a diarrhoea which lasted for five or six hours, 
after which I had no more trouble than though I 
never used it. I soon after found that a habit of 
bleeding at the nose which I had been subject to 
from a boy had stopped, showing the effect of to- 
bacco to give the circulation a tendency to the head ; 
I also gained in five or six months some 20 pounds 
of flesh, and my wife said I had become rather 
more fretful. 



I will add for the warning of others, that after 

16* 



184 SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 

three years I was in conversation with a friend, 
when I took off a leaf from some tobacco near, and 
put it into my mouth and chewed for a short time, 
when I felt its effects in every nerve, which seemed 
to vibrate like the strings of a harp : I immediately 
spit it out, but the hankering returned with such 
power that I was obliged to go on, and was unable 
to stop until the use brought me almost to the 
grave, when I succeeded in breaking the chain at 
the same time of the year, and became, I hope and 
trust, a free man forever. 

The thirst produced by tobacco seems to be un- 
quenchable, except by the use of alcoholic drinks, 
the probable reason almost every drunkard is a to- 
bacco chewer. I came near that vice myself by 
this means : it also produced restlessness, wakeful- 
ness, and when I had been using it to great excess, 
it produced a curious nervous sensation, as though 
ten thousand worms were wriggling under the skin, 
almost producing distraction. In a few months af- 
ter I had stopped this time I found I had gained 
some thirty pounds ; it often produced palpitation 
of the heart, but the great evil in my case was the 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 185 

causing a rush of blood to the head, which several 
times almost produced a fit of apoplexy. I have 
known a number of cases of this kind : one person 
in this place told me that he dropped down in a 
state of insensibility in his shop ; his wife came in 
and found him, and got assistance and got him 
into the house ; his physician told him it was pro- 
duced by the use of tobacco ; he quit, and has re- 
covered entirely. 

I might write more if I had time. If you can 
make the above remarks answer your purpose you 
are at liberty to use them ; or if you can put them 
into any other form without altering the facts, you 
can do so. Wishing you all success in arousing the 
slaves to see their situation, 

I remain yours respectfully, 

B. S. Lyman. 




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